Hi everyone, I'm reluctant to post this, but this morning at around 5:50 am, I'm fairly certain that I heard a Yellow-breasted Chat singing in the trees along the river behind my apartment in Faribault. I took our dog out, and immediately when I opened the door, I heard some very loud, sweet whistles, with lots of space between notes, I thought," That's one loud catbird!" then, I heard some odd nasally chattering, almost reminiscent of a Bobolink, but deeper. The whistles lasted for about 20 seconds, but the chattering went on for quite awhile. I did not see the bird, but when I went back upstairs, I pulled up a website that had chat calls on it, and the chat featured did a variety of songs, but part of the song sounded exactly like the bird outside. While it had catbird-like qualities, I ruled out catbird and oriole immediately. They really don't sound even close to this, and I have some experience with chats. I know they do a lot of different things including a lot of rattles.
I need to be off to work, but if anyone wishes to check this out, the bird was heard between Ravine St. and the footbridge just a block south along the Straight River. Anyone daring enough to follow up on this, good luck, and I hope you don't waste all that gas in vain! Drop me a note on your findings as well, if you don't mind. Good birding! Dave Bartkey Faribault, MN screechowl at charter.net -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://moumn.org/pipermail/mou-net_moumn.org/attachments/20080707/49803821/attachment.html
