PINE SISKIN 439 



and as many as thirty-five have been picked up as the result of enfilading a row 

 of vegetables with a single charge of shot. As the typical associations of the 

 Canadian Zone are left behind, and the greater drouth and summer heat of the 

 river flats approached, the nuisance decreases. From the immediate vicinity 

 of Quesnel we hear a few scattered complaints of moderate losses, but a short 

 distance southward, within touch of the long arm of Transition Zone conditions, 

 which stretches so far up the valley, all knowledge of the trouble seems to 

 disappear, though we do not know where it may recur. 



In Maine, siskins occurred in thousands in the spring and summer 

 of 1925. Forbush (1929) states that they "invaded gardens, stripped 

 beets, beans and other plants of their leaves, and ate the blossoms of 

 many flowering plants." A correspondent in Patten, Maine, wrote 

 Forbush that he had seen "as many as a thousand birds on a half 

 acre." 



Both the insect foods and ways of obtaining these are varied. In 

 Ohio during a "most unseasonable and heavy snow in early October, 

 these little birds surrounded our houses and Uterally skimmed the 

 outer walls of all insect Hfe. From foundation to eaves they hunted 

 in every nook and corner, capturing spiders, flies, cocoons, * * *." 

 (J. L. Parsons, 1906.) 



In February at Alameda, Calif., an oak (Quercus agrifolia) was 

 swarming with siskins. F. N. Bassett (1923) noted that the birds 

 were procuring their food from the lower surfaces of the leaves. 

 Many leaves were afflicted with the gall of a saw-fly, Callirhytis 

 bicornis. Bassett reports: "The galls were attached to the midrib 

 or a lateral vein on the lower surfaces of the leaves. They were 

 composed of leaf material, light green in color (lighter than the leaf), 

 from two to four millimeters long and shaped somewhat like a 

 miniature saddle, being depressed in the middle and rising to an apex 

 at both ends. Each contained a minute milky-white grub and many 

 close views revealed the birds 'shelling' the galls and devouring the 

 contents exactly as a domestic canary shells its seeds." 



In February at Berkeley, Calif., T. L. Rodgers (1937) writes about 

 siskins feeding in Monterey cypress: 



I was unable at first to determine, by observation, exactly what the birds were 

 eating, so I collected one hundred cypress tips, averaging three inches long and 

 representative of places all over the side of a tree on which I watched many 

 siskins foraging. Examination of the cypress tips showed many psocid-like 

 insects, many scale insects, a few small green caterpillars, and many yellow larvae 

 that were inside thin-walled cavities in enlarged green vegetative tips. There 

 were few indications of broken-off vegetative tips, but some were damaged, which 

 probably indicated that some of the yellow larvae had been torn from their 

 chambers. The indication was quite definite that the sisldns were taking only 

 insect food. 



Rodgers also saw a siskin picking aphids which it fed to a young 

 bird just out of the nest. In April at Seattle, Wash., S. F. Rathbun 



