Thursday, December 9, 2010

MA - Pine Siskins including green morphs - 12/09



Pine Siskins - green-morphs (upper two birds, front and rear) with typically plumaged birds, Gill, Franklin Co., MA. December 9th, 2010. Green-morphs show unusual amounts of yellow in various parts of the plumage but especially on the undertail coverts which should be white in typical birds. The green-morph at the front also had a nice greenish suffusion to the upperparts and yellowish-toned supercilia and surround to the ear coverts. Nice birds, sometimes causing confusion with female Eurasian Siskin.


Pine Siskin - green-morph, Gill, Franklin Co., MA. December 9th, 2010.


Pine Siskin - green-morph, Gill, Franklin Co., MA. December 9th, 2010.


Pine Siskins - Gill, Franklin Co., MA. December 9th, 2010. Slightly pale, but fairly typical bird in most respects.

What a treat to get a sudden incursion of Pine Siskins at the feeders this morning. After days with just one lone siskin working the thistle-socks with the goldfinches, a sudden mass arrival of about 30 birds included at least two 'green-morphs' - a scarce color variant with abnormal amounts of yellow in the plumage.

JPS

2 comments:

Hilke Breder said...

Nice photos of the Pine Siskins! We were overwhelmed with PS in Dec a couple of years ago, but haven't seen any yet at our feeder.

James P. Smith said...

Thanks Hilke. I'm sure you'll get some siskins soon. I was surprised by today's arrival. At 9am we had just our usual single bird but by 10am we were swamped! Keep thhose thistle feeders going and you should have some soon.

Cheers,

James