Team member Pat lives in mid Wales, and over recent years he has found that his garden feeding station is incredibly popular with birds--especially small finches called Siskins. They breed in the surrounding conifer woodlands--but during winter their numbers are swelled by influxes from elsewhere in the UK and almost certainly from Europe.
Pat is getting to know when birds are likely to appear in big numbers--generally after wet weather. We assume that wet conditions somehow prevent the birds from getting at their natural food--seeds of Alder and Birch trees.
Pat sent us a note today to say that he was catching well, and I just happened to ask what his numbers were since the start of 2023. When he downloaded the data even he was surprised--in a good way!
He has ringed ( using only 1 net in his garden) 642 new birds of 18 species!! To give you an idea about the importance of Siskin--they accounted for 564 of the total--incredible!
What's also very interesting is that of the 564 Siskin, 526 of them were juvenile birds. The next picture shows how we can tell juvenile Siskins from Adults......
There are several clues in this picture but perhaps the two most obvious have been labelled. Label 1 shows 2 white tipped ( ie juvenile feathers) within the median/lesser coverts. These have not yet been replaced by greeny/yellow tipped adult feathers like the others.
Similarly, label 2shows 4 greater coverts again white tipped and therefore juvenile unlike the green tipped inner greater coverts which are adult type.
Within the Siskin are small numbers ( but increasing according to Pat) of another small finch- Lesser Redpoll. These finches get their name from the old English for ''red head''. However, over the years we have noticed that within the population there are individuals with a mutation of the red colouring mechanism--instead it produces a yellow gold colour; like this one...
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