Siskin surge

In my last post I commented on how the number of Siskins visiting the feeders in the garden had gone down as the cold weather moved in and that there had been a similar dip in the reporting rate on BirdTrack. Numbers remained low for the duration of he cold spell when a maximum of 4 visited the feeders but as soon as the thaw set in they started to go back up and at least 8 were present on Sunday (4th). Numbers have continued to increase and at least 20 were in the garden at one point today and 16 new birds were caught and ringed in a very short ringing session that lasted less than an hour. It will be interesting to see if this increase is also mirrored by the reporting rate in BirdTrack when it is next updated.

While photographing the Siskins I couldn't resist taking some photos of a Goldcrest and Wren that frequently feed on the fat cakes. They are not brilliant photos but they were the best I could get in the heavily overcast conditions and through double glazing.

Hopefully Siskin numbers will continue to increase but you never know and today could have been the peak. I will just have to wait and see but whichever way Siskin numbers go I will report it on the blog.