Hey, Chris
How about sending me a tape-recording of your "spish!"

Harriet Whitehead
Anthro, WSU
whitehea at wsunix.wsu.edu

On Sat, 11 Feb 1995, Christopher Hill wrote:

>
>
> 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
>
>