Siskin Summary

It has been a reasonable winter and early spring for Siskins in the garden and it isn't over yet. The first Siskins were seen on the feeders back in late November which is relatively early for my garden and, interestingly, both were adult males and both were already wearing rings. Counts stayed in single figures through December, January and the early part of February, although ringing showed there was a little bit of  turnover. Numbers increased in the second half of February and peaked in early March when up to 20 were counted but there was some turnover over the course of each day so the actual peak was probably closer to 30. Counts fluctuated markedly through the middle of March and continued fluctuating as numbers dropped off through the latter part of the month. That brings us right up to today when 5 were present.

Adult male Siskin ringed 28/03/2018

A total of 77 have been ringed and there has been 1 control and that had been ringed 4 days earlier at a site 6km away. Regular readers of the blog will know I have photographed several birds that were ringed prior to this winter and although I wasn't able read the full ring numbers I could read enough to be reasonably confident that they had been ringed in the garden. Frustratingly, they all managed to avoid being recaptured but a different returning bird was retrapped recently; S144917 had been ringed on 19/04/2016 and was retrapped a couple of days ago, on 28/03/2018.

Adult female Siskin S144917 was originally ringed in the garden on 19/04/2016 and retrapped there on 28/03/2018

I have had similar retraps in subsequent years before and they are interesting because Siskins are irruptive migrants. The proportion of the population that migrates and the distance they move varies from one year to the next in response to the availability of food. In some years, like autumn/winter 2014/15, they don't migrate and are able to stay on or very near their breeding areas because of an abundance of natural food. I didn't get any Siskins in my garden that winter or in the following spring, as was the experience of most ringers. The recapture of birds from one winter or spring to the next or after intervals of more than a year shows that some birds use traditional routes and traditional feeding sites, including well stocked gardens like mine, but only when they need to move that far.