Pine siskins have been few this season, with low numbers on some Christmas Bird Counts and one on others.
But since one of the few showed up at my feeder array, I feel justified in naming the pine siskin as "bird of the week" for the last week of the year.
Besides, the pine siskin is a bird you can live in anticipation of seeing.
The siskin is an unpredictable winter visitor here. Some years, I have had several hundred; other years, I have had only a few. Other northern finches behave this way, including the redpolls and grosbeaks.
To birders, this behavior is known as "irruptive." In general, this has been a poor winter for irruptives, at least thus far. I believe it is the poorest year ever for siskins at my place west of Gilby, N.D.
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This is a little bit of a surprise, since those who watch conditions north of here had predicted a good year for siskins and for red-breasted nuthatches. They were right about the nuthatches.
Their mistake probably occurred because they considered the condition in eastern Canada. Our siskins come from central Canada.
So few have siskins been that at first, I wondered if I might have mistaken an American goldfinch for a siskin. It's an easy enough error. The birds are closely related, and they look generally alike.
A second look reassured me, however.
This was a siskin, apparent from its overall brown color, the heavy streaking on its breast and, when it took flight, the yellow flashes in its wings and tail.
Goldfinches are plainer overall, and their breasts are not streaked, although they can be rather drab. Plus, goldfinches have prominent white wing bars, and they appear greenish or gray overall, rather than brown.
I'm describing winter goldfinches, here; in summer, the males are brilliant yellow with black wings (still with the white bars) and black on top of their heads.
There is one other subtle difference worth noting. The siskin has a sharper bill than the goldfinch, rather like a pincers than a nutcracker. This reflects a difference in the birds' diets. Siskins are birds of evergreen forests and eat the seeds of a variety of trees and other plants. Goldfinches are seed eaters, too, but their conical bills are adapted to shell such delicacies as sunflowers. Both species like thistle seed. I'm entertaining the idea that the pine siskin showed up because I had just refilled the thistle feeder.
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More likely, I suspect it was a roamer that happened to fetch up with a flock of goldfinches. This would be a keen survival strategy. A flock indicates nearby food so a vagrant would be wise to join in.
Close to home
A siskin in Grand Forks County actually is not far from its summer home. The species is a common nester in central Manitoba and northeastern Minnesota-the parts of the province and state that are forested.
There are North Dakota nesting records, including some from Grand Forks County. Others are scattered across the state. The most intriguing is from Mott, N.D., out in the open space southwest of Bismarck. There, a siskin built its nest in a discarded Christmas tree in a back yard. So Robert E. Stewart reports in "Breeding Birds of North Dakota."
The goldfinches and the siskins are back of the book birds. David Allen Sibley puts them just ahead of the immigrants and exotics in his "Guide to Birds." Other bird books generally do the same, although some have them in front of the blackbirds and orioles.
This arrangement reflects the state of the birds on the evolution tree; it's of interest in a scientific way, and it provides clues to identification, since birds placed together often have similar characteristics, including size, shape, habitat and food preferences.
Knowing how birds are related helps in understanding how they behave-and why they look the way they do, perhaps even why they roam the way they do.
The absence of siskins early in the season is no predictor that they'll be away all winter. It wouldn't surprise me if I awoke one morning to find my feeders mobbed by siskins.
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Actually, I'm living in the anticipation of siskins.
