A visit to Siskin City

 On Thursday, Pete and I took our advanced trainee Liz to visit recently qualified ringer Pat at his new home just west of Welshpool. I have reported recently that Pat has been catching big numbers of finches in his new garden--and Liz needed more experience of ringing finches--so this seemed like a good idea. We took a bit of a risk in going for an afternoon visit--hoping that the birds' behaviour would follow what Pat had been reporting, ie that the birds often visited later on in the day for a feed before bedtime.

We arrived at 2.30, and Pat had just opened the nets--within 15 minutes we were extracting birds in big numbers:-

As you can see Pat only has one net, but its in a superb position and the birds just kept coming! After only a couple of hours Liz had managed plenty of experience with finches--over 80 in fact, of which 63 were new Siskins, with a handful of retraps and controls!

In this part of Wales, Siskins are common breeders, and most of the previously ringed birds Pat has handled have been from within a 20 mile radius. However, these local birds appear to attract passing birds and he has already had a bird which had been ringed in north west Scotland; and we are sure there will be lots more from far and wide as time moves on.

The other finch species regularly visiting Pat's feeders is Redpoll. I've produced several pictures of Redpoll over recent weeks, but not one of a rather special variant.

Here is a picture of a classic Redpoll--with a red ''poll'' which gives the species its name.

However, there is a mutant gene in the population, which changes the colour of the cap to a yellow/gold colour:-

I've not found any research papers on this aberration, so I don't know if it affects an individual's ability to attract a mate. I estimate from our experience that it occurs in about one in a thousand individuals so it's quite a common mutation.

Having ringed 80+ new birds on Thursday afternoon, Pat decided to open up his net for a short session  on Friday--another 21 Siskin and 4 Redpoll just demonstrates how popular his garden is!!