Tuesday 28 December 2010

The return of a winter favourite

The siskin are back! at the moment we only have a couple of females, the male usually appears a bit later on, so I am hoping we will get at least one of those too!
Siskins are pretty small birds, they never seem too nervous of humans, I have stood within inches of them watching them feed in the past.
Once on a family walk in my childhood, I found a bone lying on the ground amongst some leaves, goodness knows how I spotted it but I did! My mother and I took it along the our local museum in Taunton, where they identified it as a siskins pelvis. I had never seen a siskin at that time but I knew what they looked like as my favourite book was my 'Observer book of Birds' and the kind lady in the museum showed us a stuffed one that was in the very large collection of stuffed birds in the museum!
It took quite a few more years before I saw a living one, but now they are one of the birds I look out for every year in my garden at this time of year and this morning they arrived!

1 comment:

  1. Lovely photos of this beautiful bird. I am always amazed at how all these small birds manage to survive the winter temperatures.

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