426 U.S. NATIONAL MUSEUM BULLETIN 23 7 part i 



about for the food that they had learned to know I held concealed from them in a 

 box, dish, or other receptacle. The moment I removed the cover or exposed the 

 food, they would make a dash for it and the usual scrapping program would be on. 

 Nor was it at all necessary for me to go outside the door * * *. In a short time the 

 siskins discovered this opening [in a window pane], and it was only necessary 

 for me to draw the slide when one after another would come right into ray kitchen, 

 and soon one or more of them would be perched on my head or shoulder, or hopping 

 around on the desk where I was writing, looking for the handful of seeds that they 

 all knew was forthcoming. * * * Now and then some members of the flock 

 would elect to spend the night in the warm room, sleeping on the clothes-line, 

 stretched across the room a little below the ceiling. On such occasions they 

 seemed to be without fear and totally oblivious to people moving about the room, 

 often within a few inches of them, turning on or snapping off electric lights. 



The interested reader may want to read all of the above-quoted 

 article by E. R. Davis. He carried out a series of conditioned reflex 

 experiments. Only a paragraph about one of these (p. 386) is quoted 

 here; it concerns a button rigged to release a small batch of seeds 

 when pushed: 



For quite a while the thing remained a puzzle to them. Finally, one of them 

 happened to notice that push-button, which was a different colored wood from 

 the rest of the contraption. He sidled up to it, looked it over for a moment, then 

 gave it a "biff." This released the catch on the other side and down at his feet 

 came a little handful of seeds. This frightened him, of course, and he flew away, 

 only to return a minute later, eat the seeds that had fallen down the chute, and 

 then tried to "press the button" arrangement again. It was not long before 

 several of the flock had learned the secret, but it was quite a while before they 

 became used to the seeds falling down at their feet, so that they were not afraid, 

 and would proceed to eat them without first flying away a few inches. 



A siskin's life is not always easy. During severe weather in March 

 and April, 1939, many siskins died on Mount Desert Island, Maine 

 (R. S. Palmer, 1949). Winter deaths, presumably from eating a 

 poisonous chloride, are discussed under food. Various authors have 

 reported destruction of nests, eggs, or young by wind, sleet, and rain. 

 Heavy rains have killed young after they departed from the nest. 

 Several observers, on finding nests empty and sometimes damaged, 

 have suspected predation by the red squirrel and the blue jay. The 

 domestic cat is a known predator. The cowbu'd, too, is a hazard, 

 since its egg or chick in a siskin nest is detrimental to the siskin's 

 nesting success. Both parent siskins treat the young cowbird as one 

 of their own. At Wenatchee, Wash., R. T. Congdon (MS.) found a 

 young siskin that had died after a foot became entangled in the nest 

 lining. 



E. R. Davis (1926) described siskin actions at the sight of a northern 

 shrike at Leominster, Mass., in winter: 



It was wonderful how quickly they would detect one of these birds in the 

 vicinity, or even at a great distance. Instantl}^ if one of them appeared in the 

 sky or on a distant tree, all activity ceased among the Siskins, and each bird. 



