Subject: Re: Re. Bushtit Research
Date: Oct 11 17:13:01 1995
From: Don Baccus - donb at Rational.COM


Dennis:
>In the Seattle
>area, Bushtits come to suet constantly in some people's yards (mine, for
>example) and absolutely never in others, even when suet is in plain sight
>and Bushtits are regular visitors to the yard.

I'm certain you're aware of the suet-preference studies done last
winter (or the winter before) nationwide? Various kinds of suet
(or, stuff mixed with suet) and the relative attractiveness
of them to various birds? Folks monitored their suet on a
regular basis (certain number of hours per week, counting
bird numbers and species at fixed intervals during those
observation hours).

I know David Marshall, retired wildlife biologist here in Portland,
participated and thought the results were really interesting. He
was talking about writing something up for, I think, Oregon Birds,
but don't know if he did. He didn't seem to think the results were
intuitively obvious.

Anyway, there was a great deal of variation in the attractiveness
of various suet variants, so you'd want to correct for this in
your experimental plan regarding bushtits.

- Don Baccus, Portland OR <donb at rational.com>