Seeking out siskins

You’ll often see a flock busy feeding in the top of an alder or a birch, but they’re easily spooked

The arrival of winter brings new faces to the garden, and one to look out for is the siskin. An attractive little bird, it’s often mistaken for another finch – the greenfinch. And there are similarities – both birds are green, but the siskin is smaller, slimmer and has a distinctive, forked tail.

So, look out for a small, lively finch that moves nimbly about the upper branches of trees. They’re also gregarious by nature, so they’re rarely seen alone.

Their plumage is mostly yellow-green, but with an eye-catching strip of yellow on their wings and the base of their tail. Males have a black patch on the top of the head (like a skullcap), while females and juveniles don’t.

The chance of your garden being visited by siskins varies from place to place, and year to year. Most of Britain’s resident siskins breed in the conifer forests of Scotland, with smaller numbers using upland timberproducing plantations in England and Wales. When winter arrives, they head south and east, usually arriving around now.

But siskin garden visits can also be much more common in some years than others. That’s because they’re tree seed specialists, using their long, slim beaks to pull the seeds out of the cones of spruce, pine, birch and alder.

You’ll often see a siskin flock busy feeding in the top of an alder or a birch. They’re easily spooked and, when that happens, will fly off, a flurry of green and yellow, only to return soon after to resume their meal.

However, tree seed production fails during some years, which means that siskins have to look elsewhere for food. According to the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO), around one in five of its volunteer bird recorders see siskins in a normal year, but that jumps to two in five during winters when tree feed isn’t scarce. Which sort of winter this one turns out to be, only time will tell.