[mou] Need ID help - unusual call

[shawn conrad]

I'm hoping I can describe the call I heard today adequately.  It was nothing like anything I'd ever heard.  
 
I was walking down the Taconite Trail just north of Side Lake (northern St. Louis County).  The snow depth is still around 14" here.  I was in a mature jack pine / red pine stand with some aspen and birch present.  
 
As I was walking, I heard something calling from a group of pole sized pines.  It was a buzzy call that was actually reminiscent of someone repeatedly plucking the spring from an old screen door!  Sort of a slow "boing boing boing boing boing" (with the last 2 "boings" being slightly lower pitch.  I thought I was crazy, but I heard it repeated intermittently for over a minute, then it seemed to call back a few times in response to my pishing, but it was never visible.  Then it stopped and I wasn't able to relocate it.  The tempo of the call was slightly slower than the "jibs" of a Red Crossbill (there were a few present throughout the area this morning--also several seen gathering grit on roads in Itasca) but sounded nothing like a crossbill otherwise.  Each call reminded me a little of the buzzy whistle (much shorter however) of a Varied Thrush, which I have only heard in recordings.  (Do they have a faster, repeated call like what I heard?)  I am nearly 100% certain that I did not hear a Brown Creeper, Bohemian Waxwing, or Golden-crowned Kinglet as I am familiar with all of these species and the call was not high enough in pitch and the "vibrato" of the buzz seemed slower.  I rarely hear calls in the winter in northern Minnesota that I don't recognize, and this was really strange.  
 
Does anyone have any ideas as to what I may have heard?????  I can't really imagine it was anything other than a bird.Shawn Conradhttp://users.2z.net/itasca_chippewa_birding/ 


 
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