PINE SISKIN 441 



exicted twitter, to alight in the trees alongside and there continue 

 their feeding on the seeds of the evergreens, or on the buds of the white 

 birches and aspen trees, with the siskins showing particular liking 

 for the seeds of the alder-bushes. The siskins were a gregarious lot, 

 associating freely with all the other finches, especially with the Gold- 

 finches and the Ked Crossbills. 



"The pine siskins were fu-st attracted to my feeding place under the 

 pines, a little off the highway, by the coal ash pile. One day they 

 dropped down from the surrounding trees by the dozens. I counted 

 92 before I got too mixed up by their numbers, all clustered into a 

 little space 10 inches by 10 inches in front of my window. They ate 

 the ash-dusted snow mixed with slopwater. On an old cedar stump 

 I kept a block of salt. From rain and snow and the humidity of the 

 air, the salt had saturated the stump and this saltlick became here- 

 after the number one attraction. The birds crawled over the stump 

 and picked the salt crystals from the block itself as well as from the 

 top and the underparts of the stump, where the deposition of crystals 

 was richest, and from the gravel around it, where the snow had been 

 melted away by the salt. I put baited traps near the saltlick, hoping 

 for some good banding, but not until I changed the bait to dried 

 cedar seeds did my banding luck turn. These seeds proved irresistible 

 to the siskins and when my supply ran out I put small dishes of water 

 in the traps with the same excellent result. Thus, from January 7 

 to May 29, I banded 337 pine siskins." 



Siskins can be attracted to feeding stations by millet seed and by 

 chaff, and Forbush (1929) states that they are "extremely fond of 

 cracked butternuts." They eat many of the vegetable foods com- 

 monly used at feeding or banding stations, and eat suet occasionally. 

 In winter at Leominster, Mass., E. R. Davis (1926) notes that 

 whenever "an Evening Grosbeak came to the feeding-shelf and began 

 cracking the seeds, he would be surrounded by several of the siskins. 

 As he cracked the seeds, some particles of the kernel would scatter 

 from his beak, and immediately the siskins would rush in and gobble 

 them up. This act was not much relished by the Grosbeaks and they 

 would often show their displeasure by a vicious peck at the 

 intruder * * *." 



Dishes of water, for drinking and bathing, have been used to bait 

 siskins into traps for banding. At Sioux City, Iowa, a basin of water 

 was placed under a nesting tree and both parent siskins came to drink 

 and bathe (Hayward and Stephens, 1914). In March at Berkeley, 

 Calif., T. L. Rodgers (1937) observed: 



Several times, I saw siskins approach [eucalyptus] blossoms from above, lean 

 over and reach into them. I had supposed that they were after insects attracted 

 by the flowers, but twice I noticed that after reaching into the blossoms, they 



