Hi Everyone,

Larry Schwitters' post on the Pine Siskin nest building prompted me to add another observation. Outside my office window (which I soon won't be using, since I'm retiring full time as of today!) I hung one of those 'nesting material' balls of sheeps wool contained in a fine netting last spring. Its odd look attracted more quizzical examinations from people than birds initially, but then it became quite popular with some of the resident avifauna. Several Pine Siskins demonstrated an impressive strength to weight ratio in pulling massive beakfuls (seems like that should be a word, or is it beaksful, or beaksfull?) of the wool out and flying off to the nest site. I tried over the course of a couple of days to watch where the birds were heading but was never able to find the nest site. Then last winter after the leaves were gone, I found one of the nests only about a hundred yards away, clearly containing a significant percentage of the sheeps wool.

In the last week, the Pine Siskins are back at it again - and thus the cycle starts anew...!

Interesting that Larry's birds are using fishing line. On my annual Deschutes River (Oregon) raft trips over the last two decades plus, the Osprey population has really increased, with new nests appearing every year and old ones reused frequently. The ranchers in that area use orange or yellow nylon rope or twine for baling hay and other uses around their spreads. It is common to see Osprey nests with huge lengths of this stuff used as nest material. Often it doesn't quite stay put like the sticks and branches do, and winds up trailing out from the nest in a ten or twenty foot long streamer.

John Tubbs
Snoqualmie, WA
johntubbs at comcast.net
www.tubbsphoto.com