Pine Siskin – Bird of the Day #196

Pine Siskin / Spinus pinus

The Pine Siskin is today’s Bird of the Day.

Bird of the Day - Pine Siskin

Yesterday a small flock of these finches showed up in our back garden. It was, as they say, the first record for this site. They were back again today being their usual selves, attempting to bully much larger birds that were resisting being dislodged from the perches on the feeder. Delightful little bundles of energy!

Optional bird nerd stuff: Pine Siskins are a common breeding bird of the boreal forest. They normally live year-round in the North, roaming around in search of food. However this year they are visiting southern regions including Southern Ontario.

The process is known as irruption. When there is a poor crop of food (pine cones in this case) in their habitat a species can irrupt – move outwards in large numbers to find better feeding grounds. This is a different phenomenon from migration because it driven by circumstance and is not an annual event.

Those in the know have been expecting a Siskin invasion this year, because we subscribe to an extremely useful tool known as the Winter Finch Forecast. 🙂

IUCN Conservation Status: Least Concern.

Algonquin Provincial Park, Ontario, April 2018.

Bird of the Day #3 – Trumpeter Swan

Originally posted to Facebook on 11 April 2020.

Bird of the Day - Trumpeter Swan

As my small way of adding some beauty to your lives in these challenging times, I will be posting a bird of the day every day until the all clear is sounded.

These are Trumpeter Swans: North America’s heaviest native bird. They were nearly hunted to extinction – by 1933 the known wild population was 70. When a few thousand swans were discovered in a remote corner of Alaska in the 1950’s a reintroduction program was started. It has been a fantastic success, and there are now over 16,000 birds.

They are regular winter visitors to Ontario, often seen in large numbers in the open water around the Rideau Canal locks.

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