Barry Ulman writes:
>The fat, docile Pine Siskins are sick.

Agreed! Sick. Death toll over here in my yard (Bellevue-Eastgate) stands
at three, one a week for the past three weeks, one in the feeder tray
itself, two others below but a few feet away, plus two more probables, alive
but doomed at least, shuffling about on the ground and shrubs in other parts
of 'homestead' that I never saw again. One of those of the doomed variety
was just yesterday, nearly stepped on it as I stepped off the back porch
but pulled back at the last split second when I suddenly saw it basking in
the sunny warmth as my foot was coming right down on top. I lurched just
enough and nearly fell off the porch. Then, it would have been me too, "I've
fallen and can't get up", and there I'd be lying side by side with a sick
Pine Siskin where we would both be dying together but at least we would be
enjoying the last breaths of life in the warmth of the 60+ degree early
Spring sun, ...so maybe not so bad :-)

Interestingly, tons of healthy Pine Siskins remain high, noisy, very
active and healthy high up in the trees where they belong and have been
faithfully persistent daily for all this time. Must be a really good crop way up
there. And so, it seems, one by one, one becomes weaker and sickly and
can't keep up with the flock much less can't get back up to the treetops, thus
settles to the next best and closest thing, the feeder tray where it sits
and eats, and sits and eats less, and sits and does nothing, and then is
dead. 48-72 hours is the time frame in which all this happens I've noticed,
and I have been keeping notes. When you're in practice retirement mode, you
have time for this sort of thing :-))

So, I don't know if it's just the natural course of things around here and
something that's relatively normal within Pine Siskins in general. A big
flock, stays put in the tree tops for weeks on end, and gradually, nature
being nature, just like with people, you and me, some are going to get sick
and die. That which is immediately obvious to us as bird enthusiasts, the
feeder tray, then is sort of the avian hospice for which this inevitability
finally plays out. I mean really, how often does anyone go off walking
through the woods or anywhere else and see dead birds other than the odd one
here and there? Certainly not large numbers, and you're a person smitten
by birds and consciously aware of birds are more likely to see an obvious
roadkill, window strike, or witness a hawk or cat capture, then natural death
in nature. Yet surely there must be large numbers, otherwise, bird's
undying persistence would soon become overwhelming. Most birds, songbirds
anyway, have relatively short life spans, and when they do die, they do so
quietly in places we will never know much less see. Soon after that, nature
continues to 'clean up' with all manner of scavengers, ranging from large to
microscopically small, some not even animals, and soon leaving no trace
whatsoever of that bird's existence. It lived it's life, did it's thing, and
like all life, us included, is all too soon over.

Richard Rowlett
Bellevue (Eastgate), WA