contract.call default block_identifier is 'latest' instead of web3.eth.default_block

[newtectonics]

• Version: 5.27.0
• Python: 3.9
• OS: osx
• pip freeze output

aiohttp==3.8.1
aiosignal==1.2.0
async-timeout==4.0.2
asynctest==0.13.0
attrs==21.4.0
autopep8==1.6.0
base58==2.1.1
bitarray==1.2.2
cachetools==5.0.0
certifi==2021.10.8
charset-normalizer==2.0.10
click==8.0.3
cytoolz==0.11.2
eth-abi==2.1.1
eth-account==0.5.7
eth-hash==0.3.2
eth-keyfile==0.5.1
eth-keys==0.3.4
eth-rlp==0.2.1
eth-typing==2.2.2
eth-utils==1.10.0
frozenlist==1.3.0
google-api-core==2.4.0
google-auth==2.6.0
google-cloud==0.34.0
google-cloud-bigquery==2.32.0
google-cloud-core==2.2.2
google-crc32c==1.3.0
google-resumable-media==2.1.0
googleapis-common-protos==1.54.0
grpcio==1.43.0
grpcio-status==1.43.0
hexbytes==0.2.2
idna==3.3
importlib-metadata==4.10.1
ipfshttpclient==0.8.0a2
jsonschema==3.2.0
lru-dict==1.1.7
multiaddr==0.0.9
multidict==5.2.0
netaddr==0.8.0
numpy==1.22.1
packaging==21.3
pandas==1.4.0
parsimonious==0.8.1
proto-plus==1.19.9
protobuf==3.19.3
pyasn1==0.4.8
pyasn1-modules==0.2.8
pycodestyle==2.8.0
pycryptodome==3.12.0
pyparsing==3.0.6
pyrsistent==0.18.1
python-dateutil==2.8.2
pytz==2021.3
PyYAML==6.0
requests==2.27.1
rlp==2.0.1
rsa==4.8
six==1.16.0
toml==0.10.2
toolz==0.11.2
typing-extensions==3.10.0.2
urllib3==1.26.8
varint==1.0.2
web3==5.27.0
websockets==9.1
yarl==1.7.2
zipp==3.7.0

What was wrong?

The call() functions for eth and contract have different default block_numbers.

This difference is reflected in the documentation here:
https://web3py.readthedocs.io/en/stable/contracts.html?highlight=eth.contract#web3.contract.ContractFunction.call
and here:
https://web3py.readthedocs.io/en/stable/web3.eth.html#web3.eth.Eth.call

eth.call default block_identifier is web3.eth.default_block
contract.call default block_identifier is 'latest'

I would expect that contract.call's default block_identifier would also be web3.eth.default_block

How can it be fixed?

If this is determined to be a legitimate issue I have a fix here: credmark@e886bbd

and will submit a PR if it's satisfactory. The docs will have to be updated to reflect the change, and could break user's implementation if they were setting default_block elsewhere but expecting 'latest' in the contract api.