[CT Birds] March siskin madness!

[ctred...@comcast.net]

Some of you have been curious as to the status of my rather single-minded and definitely wacky effort to record Pine Siskin in every town in CT. What started off as an innocuous comment to Jay Kaplan in January (You know, I'll bet it's theoretically possible to find these guys in all 169 towns right now ...) ended at about 7:30 this morning, when I lucked into a pair of siskins that were calling in a row of pines then flew over me at Beardsley Park in Bridgeport. That was the one and only town in which I needed it after a tiresome but productive coastline sweep last weekend.

We all know how common these birds have been this winter, but I am still gobsmacked at how easy it was to find them, especially in a lot of the habitat-challenged towns where I expected trouble. New London? No problem -- a one minute walk into the CT College Arboretum (I love that place!) took care of that. Hartford? Thankfully, the northern edge of Cedar Hill Cemetery is in that town. I did have to buy the Regional Water Authority pass to get into the Maltby Lakes area, which made the task doable in West Haven. In only a few towns did I actually have to return a second time to try. Naugatuck provided some resistence because I didn't get any in the state forest, but I eventually got one (actually, about fifty!) near Andrew Mountain in that town.

Interestingly, in my searches I only ran into other winter finches a couple of times. I had a single female White-winged Crossbill in Columbia and a large flock of Common Redpolls in Durham. A Sterling feeder had about 120 siskins and goldfinches, and I figured the mix was about half and half, and that, folks, is the most goldfinches I have ever seen in one place. Neither the crossbill nor the redpolls were at feeders, nor were the several redpolls I found in January while doing the January list thing. Feeders definitely came in handy for finding siskins but were not required -- I would guess that about half of my town siskin ticks were of birds sitting high up in birch or white oak trees feeding up there and calling loudly. There were a few occasions when I actually heard them in pines, and when they were up there they were virtually impossible to actually see.

This was quite a fun exercise for me. Now I can rest properly before spring actually arrives.

Jamie Meyers
Canton, CT
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