On Fri, 10 Feb 1995, Nunnallee, Dave wrote:

>
> What's the record in Tweeterland for number of species pished in at one
> time?

OK, I'll bite. I don't remember all the details, and there were
probably fewer than a dozen species of birds involved, but the diversity
of taxa was the greatest I've ever called in. This story always inspired
polite disbelief in my non-birding friends.

It actually happened on one of the San Juan Islands - Lopez, I believe -
about 15 years ago when I was an enthusiastic teenager. I grew up around
New York, but I was visiting friends out there, so birds like
Chestnut-backed Chickadee and White-crowned sparrow were new to me. It
was during the breeding season, and both chickadees and WCSparrows usually
responded vigourously to spishing, as did the occasional Rufous
Hummingbird. One time I seemed to get a chain reaction going, with
enthusiastic chickadees of both types, White-crowned sparrows, a couple
species of warblers whose identities I forget, and assorted other
dickybirds joining in until I had about two dozen birds in the shrubbery
around me and another two dozen in the trees. Two hummingbirds were
hovering between two and six feet of my head, buzzing from one spot to
another to get a better angle on whatever was going on. The commotion was
so loud that crows started flying into the conifer overhead, cawing as if
there was an owl there. And once the crows got going, half a dozen gulls
started circling the tree, perhaps looking for an eagle (I had seen the
local gulls mobbing the local eagles quite regularly. At that point I
brought my gaze down from the sky and spotted a black-tailed deer that had
walked within 15 yards and was staring directly at me.

I'm sure someone can top that story, though...

Chris Hill
Seattle, WA
cehill at u.washington.edu