my wife and i and a few others from NYS made the trek out the western NJ yesterday for the Chaffinch without success. the problem is that there were so many people there (50-60 or more at any one time) that the ground-feeding birds that the chaffinch is apparently associating with, were not being allowed to come into the feeder because of birder's activities there. although the crowd of people was seemingly quiet and restrained, there was actually a lot of low noise, activity, conversations, hand-waving,etc., being generated by people which i imagine was simply intolerable for the feeder birds other than chickadees and titmice, given the proximity that the crowd is from the feeder. half the crowd (myself included initially upon our arrival before retreating to the back of the deck) was camped out on the sidelawn off the deck, and the deck itself was more than half filled. while standing there, we watched and heard the white-throat/cardinal flock attempt to come in at least three times,unsuccessfully. all the while when not trying to come into the feeders, the flock could be heard 50 or so feet off in the woods, the entire morning. we finally left at 11am, seeing what that the situation looked pretty hopeless. Good luck if you go for the bird. JPA John Askildsen Millbrook, New York
-- NYSbirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsRULES http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/nysbirds-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html 2) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/NYSBirds-L 3) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/NYSB.html Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --