Being An Outlier

I had the opportunity to be a dratted outlier today.  For this was the day I uploaded my 11 lists from last weekend's Great Backyard Bird Count.  And the 8AM Sunday morning count of Pine Siskins (I tallied 52) was deemed "excessive" by the automated monitor.  So until a human moderator reads my comments, perhaps views my data, that data point has been excluded from the corpus of 2013 today.  Well, I know what I saw.  Those little speckled brown birds with yellow wing flashes could be nothing else.  I had no problem separating out the larger House Finches and the yellower goldfinches.  And it was a cold, icy morning.  For whatever reason I was attracting significant numbers of siskins that weekend.  I can explain this in that the siskins are, I think, gathering together in advance of migration.  And I had the best, easy food source in the area.  We'll see if Cornell Lab of Ornithology approves my checklist as submitted.  For me, it was enough to experience what could be a once-in-a-very-long-time moment.