busy feeders
This cold and snowy winter has kept our feeders busy with many goldfinches. I've never seen so many of these perky, trim birds before except in late summer when our sunflowers attract them to the garden.
Yesterday in the local newspaper they ran a picture of a bird that looked very like a goldfinch, saying it was a pine siskin and that lots of these birds were showing up this winter at local feeders. The picture was faded and the bird was therefore light colored. Thinking the paper had made a mistake and shown a picture of a goldfinch to which pine siskins are closely related, I looked up pictures of the pine siskin. Then I saw these dark, striped birds amongst the goldfinches at the feeder.
goldfinch starting to turn gold
pine siskin
Yesterday in the local newspaper they ran a picture of a bird that looked very like a goldfinch, saying it was a pine siskin and that lots of these birds were showing up this winter at local feeders. The picture was faded and the bird was therefore light colored. Thinking the paper had made a mistake and shown a picture of a goldfinch to which pine siskins are closely related, I looked up pictures of the pine siskin. Then I saw these dark, striped birds amongst the goldfinches at the feeder.
goldfinch starting to turn gold
pine siskin
