Friday, 3 March 00, you wrote to me:

[snip message about albino pine siskin]

Are you saying it was white with no stripes at all? I have one that
is noticable lighter than the other siskins but it does have well
defined stripes on it. I thought it was some freaked out sparrow when
I saw--or that EXOTIC BIRD that is gonna come along one of these days.

I also identified this one from the yellow wing bars and by comparison
to other siskins. The wild thing about it was that I hung up this
finch feeder (a tube with holes in the side filled with food and
little pegs to perch on) and about 10 minutes later a BCchickadee
showed up and then this siskin showed up moments after BCC left.

The juncos, of course, immediately became territorial altho they are
too stupid to figure out the finch feeder but that siskin kicked all
their butts and crouched down like a hawk (layman's hawk) and actually
attacked them with physical contact. The juncos are posturers but
there were about 20 of em so siskin finally wandered off, cool and
victorious by its attitude. The siskin had actually moved to the suet
when the fiercely aggressive behavior was observed. I was using high
powered binos from about 20 feet away and it was an incredible image
seeing that tiny bird puff itself up, crouch down and get it on with
those juncos.

BTW, all the time stamps on my tweeters mail are getting screwy. Might
be cuz of the multiple servers sending stuff to the list but gets
kinda irritating that I can't get a chronological order to the
messages. Any suggestions would be welcome. I am using a cracked
version of The Bat as my client but it's sorting fine by the time stamp
given so don't know if there is a solution.

Oh, and to be fair, one of the dominant male juncos has figured out
how to use the finch feeder but he's the only one. And for you
scientists the siskins in this area are really rare this year. Might
be early but I have seen the 'firsts' of them so they might have all
gone up to Milton this year. They are pretty nomadic so I just might
not be crossing flight patterns with em.

Ken wrote:
> My 3 1/2 year old birdwatching daughter was helping,
> and said "Daddy, now there's five birds on the bird feeder."

Girls are so advanced. My 3 1/2 year old son calls Towhees 'toy
birdies' and can say 'see 5 birdies' but none of this complete
sentence stuff. Stop your bragging! :)

Brice Matson
Cinebar, Lewis County, WA
mailto:matson at myhome.net