Mary's comment about the lack of pine siskins is consistent with our
experience here on Mercer Island--no pine siskins for quite some time. Up
until last year they were the second most abundant bird at our feeders,
house finches being the most common.

Anyone know what happened to them?

--Henne Queisser
Mercer Island


----- Original Message -----
From: "hrudkaj mary" <hrudkajm at hotmail.com>
To: <tweeters at u.washington.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, November 29, 2005 2:34 PM
Subject: [Tweeters] Non=Marine Annas


One of my neighbors was telling me of his having to fill his hummingbird
feeders as he has two Anna's coming in to feed at present. His house is
about 2 miles from Hood Canal and about a quarter mile from the Tahuya River
which is about 300 ft below us up here on Bear Ridge. We're high enough we
got between 2 and 3 inches of snow last night, most of which is now gone.

This morning I had to shovel off the deck before putting out feed for the
birds. At first light there was a lone pine sisken amongst the mob of
juncoes and purple finches. Some time during the morning hours it's managed
to clone itself as there are now two siskins feeding on the deck. Granted
two siskens are a far cry from the 250plus that were here last winter.

Yesterday I and another birder from Kitsap Audubon did a dry run for our
area for the CBC count on Dec. 17. Neither of us has seen as many hooded
mergansers as we found in the several areas we visited. Common and
red-breasted were also abundant. We found three long-tailed ducks in the
Washington Narrows which made my day.... We also found a Eurasion wigeon in
a small flock of grazing Am. wigeons at Evergreen park. It must have just
finished molting as its head was very dark and its other plumage was crisp
and vivid. And all this within the city limits of Bremerton.

With all those snowy owls around, do they know something about our coming
winter we don't???

Mary Hrudkaj
Belfair/Tahuya/north Mason Co.
hrudkajm at hotmail.com