A Photo Study Of Pine Siskins And White-winged Crossbills

The Pine Siskin (Carduelis pinus) is the most common of our irruptive Winter Finches. I photographed the Siskins below on October 20th feeding in the Hemlock in front of the Peace Valley Nature Center. There were about twenty birds in the flock together with an equal number of American Goldfinches.

 Pine Siskin

Another of our Winter Finches is the White-winged Crossbill (Loxia leucoptera), a medium-sized finch of our northern boreal forests. It is truly adapted for extracting seeds from the cones of coniferous trees. It moves great distances tracking the cone crop from place to place each year. A flock  of about 23-26 birds has been hanging around in the Red Spruce (Picea rubens) trees near the entrance to the Marina at Nockamixon State Park for the past week or so (January, 2009.) Despite the poor light, I was able to photograph some of the birds feeding actively this morning.

Male White-winged Crossbill
 
Female White-winged Crossbill

I added another ten Siskin images (K through T) that I took this week (April 5 -9th.) We have had a bunch of Pine Siskins this year!

    Revised April 10th, 2009

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© Howard B. Eskin 2009                    Please click here to email suggestions or comments to hbeskin@voicenet.com