Siskins

Towards the end of February, I was working from home and when I noticed a Siskin on one of the sunflower heart feeders. This was the first Siskin I’d seen in the garden (other than flyovers) since the first winter we moved in, when I'd recorded a single bird on one occasion. 

A few days later, I was ringing in the garden, not catching much, when a female Siskin flew into the net. It was accompanied by a male, which evaded capture, but was a great surprise and it was pleasant to ring my first Siskin since the faraway days of ringing at Rushcliffe CP.

In the following days, more and more birds arrived and soon, the garden was alive with a constant buzz of wheezing Siskin song and pew-pew calls. The next chance I got, I put a net up and managed 10 birds one morning before the sun rose above the nearby houses and stopped play. The birds didn’t go anywhere and the in following few weeks I caught 44 new birds and retrapped a few in the process. Towards the end of the period I was catching more retraps than new birds, so I presumed I’d marked most of them. Unfortunately other commitments meant I couldn’t trap quite as much, although by the beginning of April, numbers were starting to dwindle. It was interesting to note that after I thought they’d disappeared, some birds returned from time to time, which led me to think these could be local breeders.

I haven’t seen any more in the garden for about 3 weeks so presume they have disappeared, but it was nice to be lucky enough to have them choose my garden to fill their ‘hungry-gap’ at the end of the winter. Hopefully they’ll be back one day...

The photos below show some of the ageing criteria for these birds.

A first-winter female with 2 old greater coverts and typical juvenile tertials with ill-defined edges and wear. Also note the pointed tail feathers with the limited green of the female:

 

A first-winter male, also with 2 old coverts. The tail is more adult-like than many juvenile tails, nice and round, but the wing gave it away as a young bird. Some of the 1st winter males also seemed to have grey feathers mixed in with the black crown: 

And an adult female with no moult limit (though the photo almost appears to show one – this wasn’t the case), a nice rounded tail, and tertials with much more defined edges than that of the young bird above: 

 

Tom