For the Birds: Who Says, "Pigs Can’t Fly?”

Pine Siskin are gregarious.
This group gathers at the bath.
Photo by Christine Southwick

By Christine Southwick

Do you have birds that are brown with yellow patches fighting and darting around each other for spaces at your feeders? Are you filling your feeders twice a day because of their vociferous appetites? If so, you know why Pine Siskin are often called Pig Siskin.

These noisy, flashy little finches often appear in our winters in flocks from four to eighty-four, although during irruptive years some areas get flocks in the thousands. You might have Pine Siskin at other seasons too because these finches are nomadic, meaning that they don’t have a set migration. Instead they follow their food sources, and in years that their preferred food of evergreen cone seeds is low, they fly searching until they find suitable substitutes— other evergreens with cones, shrubby thickets with seeds or berries, un-mowed grassy fields, and especially bird feeders. Their bills have evolved to a narrow pointy shape that enables them to extract cone seeds and other small seeds.

Pine Siskin close up
Photo by Christine Southwick

Pine Siskin are usually observed upside down extracting their favorite food from cones in the tip-tops of evergreen trees. They also eat alder seeds, and when they travel in search of food, often settle in our mixed forests. These feisty birds keep trees healthy by gleaning spiders, insects and grubs found on branches, and on/in leaves. During the winter, they will often be found on the ground looking for these delicacies.

Pine Siskin are gregarious finches that stay in flocks continually making contact calls. They usually nest close to each other in loose colonies, high up in trees, in the boreal forests in Canada. Females build the highly insulated nests, and hide them under an overhanging branch. The females keep the eggs warm continuously while being fed by their monogamous mates.

Pine Siskin on left, House Finch on right for comparison
Photo by Christine Southwick

Pine Siskin can stay warm in extreme cold by raising their metabolic rate, something that few other birds can do. And when they store seeds in their crop (pouch area all birds have in front of their throat) they can eat a few seeds at a time, and have enough fuel for five to six hours of heat during sub-zero nights.

They gladly eat black-oil sunflower seeds, and other shelled seeds, and in cold winter will crowd suet feeders. Add water kept in liquid form for their drinking and bathing needs, and you will have a delightful show of assertive feeder jockeying.