Pished my first bird today!

[MN Shutterbug]

I'd recently read about pishing for birds and tried it a couple times with no success. However, I was standing on my upstairs deck today and decided to practice a bit. After a little over a minute, there was a downy staring at me from about 4 feet away. I hadn't seen a downy in my yard for months. I thought this was kinda cool. My neighbors probably thought I was crazy.

[Steve Foss]

Cool deal, Mike!

Pishing works better for some species than others. Some sparrows and warblers, as well as chickadees, nuthatches and some woodpeckers, immediately respond to pishing, while other species are uninterested and still others fly away as fast as they can when they hear that noise.

How you shape your mouth and how fast your rate of "pish" also has an impact on frequency and tone, and some birds repond better to one type of pishing than to others.

Lots of fun and experimentation ahead!

[midex717]

Ok ya got me, what is "pishing", and how do you do it?

[MARINERMAGNUM]

Ok,let's say you drink 4 cans of beer before you go to bed and....... oh,wait, pisHing ! Scratch the above.

Pishing is simply making a sound like if you were trying to duplicate the sound of air leaking out of a tire in short bursts. pishhh,pishhh,pishhh-just like it reads.

Some birds are attracted to this sound and will come close to you to investigate.

[micpic]

You all got it right. Either the short spirts of a whistling sound or a mimic of the original call of the bird. Start with Cickadees, they are the easier birds. A Gray Catbird can be driven crazy by pishing because they act like a Mockingbird anyway. But like Steve says, some birds will vanish immediately when you try it.

Mic

[icewoman]

Did something similar last weekend with a CD of bird calls. Played both the Cardinal and the Piliated woodpecker and both showed up in the yard. Kind of neat.