11 . 
October 6, 1899 - Friday. 
This morning two blue jays came." They would 
come and get two nuts in their hills and grabbing 
a full husk fly off towards Hackett’s. One stay- 
ed a longer time than the other always. They 
hammered them out of the husks with their bills. 
Once one lit on the edge of the roof as the other 
dropped a nut and then it went down after it. 
Mien I went to look at rqy traps I saw a lot of 
robins on the island and several redwinged black¬ 
birds flew over. One of them gave a queer squawk 
along with the tsee-e-er note and I heard some 
bluebirds. This morning I heard strange notes and 
saw strange birds in the trees near the house. I 
did not have time to investigate till this after- 
noon and then I found that they were the pine 
Siskins. The underparts were yellowish white 
streaked hei.vily with black; back streaked with 
black; and feathers edged with rufous; belly un¬ 
streaked; long feathers of wing edged with white; 
, tail notched; crown dusky; rest of head like 
breast only darker. Some were darker than the 
others and had the underparts more distinctly 
^rked with yellow and the white on the wings 
yellow. The bill is strong and conical. They 
are a little smaller than our English sparrow. 
^he flight is slightly bounding and undecided. 
There were about twenty-five of them. Theyfed 
° n the small cones of the arbor vitae. The note 
generally given while sitting was a twittering 
dhwit-wit-wit-wit . Another was a shrill squeal- 
chia- chia nearly always given on the wing. 
“®y were" silent while feeding and generally 
^bile sitting. They were quite tame, but when I 
( b-ropped my notebook they flew away. They gave a 
■££ jL e like the goldfinches. 
I 
October 7, 1899 - Saturday . 
Saw the pine siskins again in the little arbor 
the ■k' Sometimes when hanging back down from 
Ranches they have to flutter their wings to 
