THE PINE SISKIN. 



V 



Siskin. Its breeding range cuincidcs wiUi the (listributiim of evergreen 

 timber; its feeding forays include all alder trees; and ruving bands are 

 likely tn turn up anywhere in eastern Washington, if there is shrubbery 

 larger or greener than sage-brush at hand. 



Much of Siskin's food is obtained upon the ground. City lawns are 

 favorite places of resort ; these birds, together with California Purple Finches, 

 appearing to derive more benefit from grass plots, whether as granaries or 

 insectaria, than does any other species. They share also with Crossbills a 

 strong interest in the products of fir trees, whether in cone or leaf. Their 

 peculiar province, however, is the alder catkin, and the tiny white seeds 

 obtained from this source are the staple supply of winter. Mr. Brown, of 

 Glacier, has examined specimens in which the crops were distended by 

 these seeds exclusively. While the observer is ogling, it may te an over- 

 modest Townsend Sparrow, a flock of Pine Siskins will charge incontinently 

 into the alders above his very head. W'ith many ce-ics and ceeiiis they fall 

 to W'Ork upon the stubborn catkins, poking, twisting, prying, standing on 

 their heads if need be, to dig out the dainty dole. Now and then, without 

 any apparent reason, one detachment will suddenly desert its claim and 

 settle upon another, precisely similar, a few feet away; while its place will 

 be taken, as likelv as not. b\' a new band, charging the tree like a volley of 

 spent shot. 



Nesting time with tlie Siskin extends from March toi September, and 

 the parental instinct appears in the light of an individual seizure, or decimating 

 q)idemic, rather than as an orderly taking up of life's duties. Smitten couples 

 drop out from time to- time from the communal groups, and set up temiiorary 

 establishments of their own ; but there is never any let-up in the social whirl 

 on the part of those who are left ; and a roistering company of care-free 

 maids and bachelors en fete may storm the very tree in which the first lullabies 

 are being crooned by a hapless sister. Once in a while congenial groups 

 agree to retire together, and a single tree or a clump of neighbors may boast 

 a half-a-dozen nests; tho which Is which and what is whose one cannot 

 always tell, for the same intimacy which suggested simultaneous marriage, 

 allows an almost unseemly interest in the private afifairs of a neighbor. 



Once eml)arked upon the sea of matrimony, the female is a very deter- 

 mined sitter, and the male is not inattentive. In e.xanjining the nest of 

 a sitting bird one may expect the mother to cover her eggs at a foot's remove, 

 without so much as by-your-leave. 



The nest, in our experience, is invariably built in an evergreen tree, 

 usually a Douglas spruce (PseudotsHga niucronata), and is commonly saddletl 

 upon a horizontal or .slightly ascending limb at some distance from the tree 

 trunk. Viewed from Ijelow, it a])pears merely as an accumulation of material 

 at the base of divergent twigs, where nmss and waste is wont to gather. 



