Recently, my neighborhood was visited by several squadrons, perhaps an entire wing, of American Goldfinches. Nearby trees (elms?) come to life in the spring with an explosion of little winged seedpods (looking something like a classic ufo), and the little birds have a feast. Some people call goldfinches "wild canaries," and they are indeed good singers.

For about two weeks, these trees were literally crawling with goldfinches - perhaps as many as a couple hundred - as they fed, and sang, and chased each other around in brief, acrobatic sorties.

Nearby, a pair of starlings were nesting in a cavity in one of the trees. While the finches fed, the papa starling sat on a nearby wire, flapping his wings, pointing that yellow beak skyward, and singing his starling riffs.

Starlings are related to Mynah birds, and are actually not bad singers - if that's what you would call it - although they don't really have a very strong voice.

I walked out with my morning coffee one day last week to enjoy this noisy spectacle - hundreds of goldfinches feeding and singing, and the male starling, doing his thing.

Suddenly, the starling gave off two distinctly different kinds of chirps, and with a great "wheeee," all these birds suddenly took to the air ... just as a red-souldered hawk flew by. Immediately upon taking fllight, all the tiny birds, accompanied by the starling pair, descended on the passing hawk like a cloud. I lost sight of the birds for a minute as they flew behind some foliage, and the next thing I saw, the hawk was apparently chasing one of the finches.

As I watched, the raptor completed several tight, vertical loops (10 metres?) trying to overtake what looked to be a speck - obviously, a goldfinch.

I didn't see a strike, and a moment later, the hawk flew by again, apparently empty-taloned.

Several times over the next few minutes, the entire flight of goldfinches quit their roosts with the chorused "Wheeeee" and coursed around the neighborhood before finally settling down, and getting back to their feast.

Did the goldfinches respond to the starling's warning, or had one of their own number sounded an alarm that I hadn't heard? Dunno, but I have read that bird and some mammal species have a high-pitched alarm call that predator's can't zero-in on, but which alerts all their own number as well as members of any other potential prey species nearby.

Seemingly, not only birds of a feather flock together, and there are other associations of this nature, where one the alarm or warning calls of one species benefit the entire prey populations.

Well, the red-shouldered hawk is more comfortable catching terrestrial reptilian prey; I've seen them many times winging back to their roost/nest with a snake dangling from the raptor's talons. If the pursuer had been an accipitor - one of the true hawks -the outcome may have been different, but the little goldfinch is no slouch on the wing and probably not an easy airborne target for any raptor.

On another occasion, however, I saw a goldfinch pounced upon by a scrub jay, and dispatched by the jay's nasty beak.

Mark Twain had a bit to say about jays and ravens in A Tramp Abroad

S