A Common Redpoll was on the feeder around 10 am on Nov 10. Ate for a few minutes. Not seen again.
Hours earlier I had walked outside and seen a bird on the same perch. I was surprised it did not fly. I made it out to be a goldfinch at the time. Maybe it was. Or maybe it was this bird.
Previous redpoll sightings in the yard were January 23, 2000 (2 feeding under burning bush beside driveway), and January 8, 2006 (6+? with goldfinches, briefly, in the top of the spruce).
Why am I so captivated by the idea of drinking tasteless, slippery, crunchy-kerneled seeds? Because subja seeds sound like fun. I first learned of them by browsing The Indian Spice Kitchen , where Monisha Bharadwaj describes them, but Osimum basilicum seeds seem impossible to find. I made a special trip to Seattle's Uwajimaya to track them down, but came up empty. I stopped at Market Spice at Pike Street, where they hadn't heard of them (but they suggested another shop down the street). I went into Souk, where the gentleman understood what I was looking for only after I described it; he knew the seeds by a different name, which he couldn't remember, and said his sister gets them at a shop (the name not in his memory) on Roosevelt Avenue. But I was out of time in the city and couldn't follow up. (But before I took more than a few steps out Souk's door, the proprietor called me back in, because he had asked his arriving friend what those seeds were called. Tukmaria, ...
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