Siskin Spotting

Like the Reed Bunting I blogged about recently the Siskin is another bird you're going to find tricky to spot for most of the year. They are one of our smaller finches with a long, narrow bill perfect for extracting seeds from plants and trees and spend most of the year in woodlands and conifer plantations. Their distinctive yellow, green and black plumage means they are very hard to spot once the leaves are back on the trees. However in winter they are a regular visitor to garden feeders especially enjoying niger seed and peanuts. For the first time this year I've had a couple visit the feeders set up at work and at the weekend this striking male kindly posed for me.