This week my Saturday Bird is the Eurasian Siskin (Spinus spinus). Other common English names include European Siskin, Common Siskin or just Siskin.
The Eurasian Siskin is common throughout Europe and Eurosiberia. It is a member of the finch family and is related to the American Goldfinch and Pine Siskin found in North America.
This is a male feeding on peanuts in a garden in southern Cheshire, England.
This is my contribution to the Weekly Prompts: Bird Feeders challenge.
First, I should admit that I have a love/hate feelings towards bird feeders. If I am living somewhere suitable for bird feeders there’s always some out. But for at least a decade, possibly two decades, I avoided photographing birds on feeders. That was due to getting frustrated with editors always picking the photo of a bird on a feeder over the same species in a natural setting.
An early photo of a leucistic juvenile Great Spotted Woodpecker on a feeder. Published in a bird watching magazine to illustrate an article on feeding the birds with no mention of the leucistic plumage.
Another early photo, a male Eurasian Siskin on a feeder. A published photo where the editor ignored shots of the same bird in the tree with a natural background.
Fast forward 20+ years and there’s a male Black-throated Blue Warbler coming to eat the grape jelly in an Oriole feeder. Forget the rule about no photos of birds on feeders, I want a record of the behaviour.
Finally, a White-breasted Nuthatch hanging upside down on a suet feeder a couple of years ago.
This is my contribution to the A Photo a Week Challenge: Urban.
My initial thought was that I don’t do urban before thinking of urban Red Foxes. At that point I started thinking about some of the flora and fauna I have photographed in urban areas.
An American Robin on the Lake Huron shoreline in Southampton, Ontario. Canada.
An Eastern Chipmunk in an urban garden, Southampton, Ontario, Canada.
Hoarfrost on Cotoneaster berries photographed in an urban Cheshire garden.
A male Eurasian Siskin eating peanuts in an urban garden, Cheshire, England.
A Red Fox trotting along the Lake Huron shoreline in Southampton, Ontario.
A Borage flower photographed in an urban Cheshire garden.
My contribution to the Squares and Circles A Photo a Week Challenge.
I was having some trouble with the squares part of challenge until I thought about some of the bird feeders made out of square mesh. Then I remembered the circular Oriole feeder we got last year.
A leucistic juvenile Great Spotted Woodpecker feeding on a square suet feeder made of square mesh. Leucistic means that the bird lacks dark pigmentation, what should be black is light brown on this bird. The shot was published in a magazinea decade or so ago.
A male Eurasian Siskin eating peanuts out of a circular, square mesh feeder. This shot was published in a magazine a couple of decades ago.
A male Baltimore Oriole feeding on grape jelly out of a circular bowl in a circular feeder.
A male Black-throated Blue Warbler pretending it’s an Oriole by eating grape jelly out of a circular Oriole feeder.
This week’s Cosmic Photo Challenge is Squares. I had a few ideas for the challenge but this ended up an obvious choice with squares of wire mesh holding peanuts for the birds.
This is a male Eurasian Siskin (Spinus spinus) feeding on peanuts in a garden in Cheshire, England. Although a year round resident in the U.K. it is more commonly seen in the winter when it comes to bird feeders.
This is the way most people see Siskins which probably explains why a magazine editor used this photo over others shots of the species in natural settings that I had submitted.
