Moscow/Pullman Christmas Bird Count (CBC) numbers for Bohemian Waxwings
range from 0 to thousands. This year yielded 0. Yesterday, a flock of 15
to 20 cruised through my yard. With this warm winter, perhaps their push
south has been delayed. The waxwing flock passage caused great agitation
among the 2 or 3 robins wintering in the yard. One of the robins mixed it up
with the circling waxwing flock. I couldn't tell if the robin was chasing
the waxwings or vice-versa, but I think it was the former. Do robins "know"
(in an evolutionary sense) that the waxwings are competition for the winter
berries? Most of the small berries in my yard have already been eaten by
the robins. After surveying the yard from the top of a tall birch, the
waxwing trilled on to more fruitful territory.

A little flock of American Tree Sparrows has been wintering in a
hawthorn/reed canary-grass patch about half a mile from here. They've been
there at least a month. They occasionally visit the patch of honeysuckle
bushes in my yard. The honeysuckle bushes are growing in tall grass along
the edge of the road. When I see them in the hawthorns, the tree sparrows
are almost invariably in the lower half of the shrub, within a foot or two
of the tall grass surrounding the shrub. They survey the situation from
their shrub perch then drop back into the grass. I've never seen them on
open ground, or even in tall grass without shrubs. For a bird with such
plebian habitat preferences, it seems odd they are apparently declining in
many parts of the country. (But their number are too sporadic on the
Moscow/Pullman CBC to draw any conclusions for here.) "Clean" farming
practices and the loss of weedy lots in cities might be part of the reason,
but there are many brushy places along the Palouse River through town where
tree sparrows are, as far as I can tell, rare to absent.

Kelly Cassidy
Pullman WA