This morning (January 3, 2006), a little flock of siskins trilled and
chittered their way across the yard. Since I have no bird feeder, siskins
rarely spend much time in the yard. They buzz through, checking out all the
trees for foraging potential. Sometimes, they hit a batch of tasty seeds or
bugs and hang out a few days. Usually, they move on within the day, as they
apparently did today.

I would not have given them much thought, except for the recent discussion
on tweeters about this being a siskin "low" period, which led to me
pondering how a group like tweeters can periodly get going on a discussion
of a particular species, with posters tossing out first-hand anecdotal
observations or interesting research tidbits. This being the new year and
all, I then thought it might be worthwhile to have a "species-of-the-week"
for which tweeters wrack their memory for their observations of that
species.

So, how to choose a species to start? Phylogentic order wasn't appealing,
since we would all pass out from boredom wading through the zillions of
ducks. (No offense to thos duck biologists out there.) Alphabetical order
by common name seemed better, since it scrambles the phylogentic groups.
So, I sorted my list of birds regularly occurring in Washington. The first
bird that comes up is Acorn Woodpecker. Hmm. Not likely a bird too many
Washington birders have a lot of first-hand experience with. Second bird is
American Avocet. A little better.

Okay, so what the heck. I propose these first two species,. Acorn
Woodpecker and American Avocet as species-of-the-week. For these two
featured birds:

Any interesting behaviors you've seen first-hand?

Do either of these birds evoke any outstanding birding memories that maybe
don't have anything to do with the bird itself, except that the memory is
associated with the bird?


I confess to never having seen an Acorn Woodpecker (although I think I heard
one birding a park in California during a professional meeting).

American Avocet: In my mind, this bird is inextricably linked, along with
several other species, with my reentry into birding after a 15-year hiatus.
I had traveled from Pullman to Olympia to offer an opinion about the
ecological value of a piece of property someone was thinking of bequeathing
to WSU. I rode with Dick Johnson on the way back to Pullman. Dick wanted
to make numerous birding stops. That was okay with me, since I am a
meandering traveler prone to numerous sight-seeing stops myself. On this
13-hour trip acorss the state, we saw an Avocet in a muddy pond in eastern
Washington from the shoulder of the highway, a striking bird in an otherwise
drab landscape. "Recurvirostra is its scientific name," Dick said. So
fitting, and so easy to remember. Wish all the other scientific names were
so easy.

Kelly Cassidy