Stuart, you asked about pishing.

Well, I've pished on all continents (except Antarctica; you can freeze your
pisher there), and North America really is *the* pishing continent. It's
less effective in tropical America (but many birds, especially migrants,
respond) and relatively ineffective anywhere out of North America,
but--notwithstanding what some experts have decreed--there's always a
species or two that will respond, so it's worth trying. I've asterisked
birds on my day lists that have responded when I've been in some other
countries. I think sometimes you attract a species that then attracts
other species by its alarm calls; I've occasionally had quite a flock build
up, once in southern France with tons of goldcrests and tits and once in
the mountains of Nepal with several babbler species that I can recall. You
*can* pish yourself blue in the face much of the time without getting a
response; that was the case in Australia. Some people years ago were
talking about white-eyes being the nuclear species of flocks in parts of
Asia and Africa, and perhaps imitating white-eye calls would be the answer.
I can't imitate them and haven't had tapes of them to try.

Pishing to me sounds like the alarm calls of wrens and especially vireos; I
don't know if that is significant, but someone could certainly do a study
by comparing what came to tapes of alarm calls of various local birds.
It'd be a fine project for someone. I played Red-breasted Nuthatch calls
once and got a good multispecies response.

Pygmy-owl toots--if you know what the local pygmy-owl sounds like--should
always be good. Ferruginous Pygmy-Owl calls are great in the Neotropics.
I tried North American pygmy-owl calls in Russia with no results, but I did
have passerines come to pishing at times there.

Doesn't work in Hawaii. A theoretical paper hypothesized that it wouldn't,
as there is no common avian predator.

Dennis Paulson phone: (206) 756-3798
Slater Museum of Natural History fax: (206) 756-3352
University of Puget Sound e-mail: dpaulson at ups.edu
Tacoma, WA 98416