Burton Guttman wrote:

> but two evenings ago a pair of siskins appeared, hung
> on the feeder and fed for a few minutes, and then flew off. I was quite
> amazed, and my amazement raised the question in the header: How do birds
> find these things?

We have Pine Siskins at our thistle feeders and I asked one of them
how it
found the feeder. It is a bit long but the story goes like this:

As you know we Siskins eat thistle seed right off the stock and we
also
rummage around in the trees looking for little bugs and seeds in the
cracks in
the bark. In 1998 my grandparents were flying by your house on their
way to a
riparian area about 2 miles north. When they saw all the birds at the
other
feeders in your yard they decided it was time to take a break,
especially
since they saw that you had a fountain with running water in it.

Ol' grandpa landed on this funny looking branch (tube feeder perch) to
take a
breather and noticed there was a small hole in the trunk. (tube
feeder) Being
very curious and knowing that it might have a bug or some edible item
in it he
hung upside down and stuck his beak in the small hole and to his
amazement out
came a thistle seed!

He ate his fill (survival of the fittest) before giving grandma (she
was
bathing) a whistle to come over and try out this tree trunk that had a
unlimited supply of thistle seed in it.

They passed this information on to my parents and they onto us. We
will also
tell our children that when they see a small partially transparent
tree trunk
that hangs down from another skinny tree, there is a good possibility
there is
some food there, especially if it belongs to one of those humans that
like to
observe our every move.

They (humans) even have some sort of club that they named after some
of the
sounds we make. The club is called "tweeters".

Jerry and Sandy Converse
Grand Coulee, WA
mailto:sanjer at televar.com
http://ConverseCorner.com

Never be afraid to try something new.
Remember, amateurs built the Ark and
Professionals built the Titanic.