While we listen and watch for pine siskins in Pennsylvania, here’s one of their cousins from the other side of the world.
This male Eurasian siskin (Carduelis spinus) resembles a pine siskin but his colors are more striking with his black cap and bright yellow and black wings and tail. He lives in northern Europe and northeastern Asia and irrupts southward in some winters, just like our siskins do. (Click here to see North America’s pine siskin for comparison.)
Without knowing his identity you could probably guess “siskin” if you saw him in Taiwan where he was photographed by K.Lin (a.k.a. Hiyashi Haka).
Please click on the image to see the original photo and scroll down to read K.Lin’s description of this bird.
(photo by K. Lin, Hiyashi Haka on Flickr, Creative Common license)
In mid-November of 2014, a Eurasian Siskin was sighted with Red Crossbills and Pine Siskins in the village of Unalaska, in western Alaska. The bird was photographed (search with Bing on “Eurasian Siskin aba”). It’s one of only two or three North American records not to be complicated by the issue of escaped cage birds. Kate, was this sighting on your mind when you wrote your blog today? Tony
Tony, no I was not aware of the unusual sighting. Instead, I am familiar with K.Lin’s work and liked this photo in particular.