Pine siskins, in the finch family, are no bigger than your thumb
No sooner do I fill bird feeders than pine siskins swarm around me, alighting on feeding perches within arm’s reach.
On a frigid morning, I held out my hand with a palmful of birdseed. A finch immediately landed on my hand and began chomping down the seed.
Then another siskin came and another, until I had a half-dozen feeding out of my hand. Others perched on my arms, shoulders and head to wait their turn at the palm-held feast.
A friend calls me a bird whisperer. But I doubt a cardinal would ever feed out of my hand. Nor a chickadee. Nesting bluebirds will feed at a handheld tray of mealworms if I’m lucky.
Perhaps the little siskins, no bigger than my thumb, thought I was a metal bird feeder atop a pole, standing as I was in a black winter parka with the hood over my head. Or maybe my handheld pile of food was too good to resist.
The birds have a voracious appetite. They crowd around bird feeders and blanket the yard where I’ve scattered seed. I’ve tallied an average of 45 sis
kins in my yard every morning since mid-December.
Their only competitors are American goldfinches, to whom they’re related. But goldfinches won’t abide close proximity to me. Maybe they should. Otherwise, they might still be joining the feeding frenzy instead of allowing their kindred siskins to eat all the goodies.
While watching the siskins feed out of my hand, with their tiny, sharp-pointed beaks, I noticed how they jerk their heads around to be alert for predators. When they sense danger, the whole flock zips to the treetops with wingbeats perturbing the air in a whooshing sound.
As cute as they are, pine siskins lack the glorious plumes of their goldfinch kin. They instead have heavily streaked brown bodies with yellow tinges on wings and tail, the latter being forked at the tip.
Masses of pine siskins are hardly a regular winter sight in Houston and surrounding communities. A few will usually show up in winter but not in large numbers.
That’s because the birds have unpredictable migration patterns, with big flocks showing up erratically from one part of the country to another. They don’t faithfully return to precise locations on northern breeding grounds.
But I hope they keep coming to my backyard.