It would be useful to go through Christmas Bird Counts to see if the
number of Bushtits is always divisible by 40,... or 32, or 17, or 13...

Gene Hunn.

On Thu, 12 Oct 1995 kraig at wln.com wrote:

>
> >"It was a joke, an old "Rich Stallcup story" from California, that he
> >claimed they always came in flocks of 17."
>
> We always seem to use "forty" as the generic bushtit measure. On
> Christmas counts: "Hey, I've got a flock of bushtits." "How many?"
> "Oh, forty."
>
> We have at least forty bushtits using our yard in the winter, and
> plenty of suet, but the two never meet. We're out in semi-rural
> Thurston County. Could there be an urban locale/suet eaters
> connection here?
>
> Eric Kraig
> Olympia, WA
> kraig at wln.com
>