[EBB Sightings] Pine Siskins in Berkeley

Hi EBBs,

I, too, am very jealous of all of the reports of Pine Siskins.  Although we
have a plastic upside-down thistle feeder, no pine siskins here yet.
Tomorrow we are going to purchase a sock feeder.  We had two which were
previously destroyed by our resident squirrels.

However, not to be outdone by the pine siskins, today we had our first
sighting of a white-throated sparrow in our yard.  We've been keeping our
eyes open for one because we had one later in the season last year.  The
white-throated was in the company of about six or seven each  white-crowned
and gold-crowned sparrows.  Also appearing again today was a red-breasted
nuthatch.  A few days ago we had a black phoebe, just about on schedule from
our 2003 records.  It's really tough to tear myself away from the kitchen
window to get anything else done at my house.  We live in northwest Walnut
Creek.

Laura Gee
----- Original Message -----
From: "Judith Dunham" 
To: 
Sent: Wednesday, October 27, 2004 5:09 PM
Subject: [EBB Sightings] Pine Siskins in Berkeley


> Hi Everyone,
> Reading the reports of backyard Pine Siskins over the past few days made
> me desperately jealous. In the ten years we've lived south of campus in
> Berkeley (between Shattuck and Telegraph, Dwight and Ashby), we have
> never seen siskins in the yard. I decided that if this was possibly an
> irruption year, our time may have come.
> And indeed it did this afternoon, when three Pine Siskins plastered
> themselves onto the thistle sock, sharing the seed with two American
> Goldfinches and one Lesser Goldfinch.
> Also showing up today were the season's first Townsend's Warbler and
> first Yellow-rumped Warbler. A Fox Sparrow joined the gathering of
> White-crowned and Golden-crowned Sparrows.
> Good birding,
> Judith Dunham
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