Pine Siskins and Red-breasted Nuthatch

26 December 2015. Ancaster, ON. A new experience for me today, I took part in a Christmas Bird Count. Every year across North America, in the weeks surrounding Christmas, various bird-centric clubs make a disciplined count of birds in their area; the increasingly valuable compiled results show continental population trends. Our local naturalist club has always participated in the count, this year for the 95^th time.   We cover a defined area, a circle having a radius of 7.5 miles centred on a nineteenth-century castle and covering a varied mix of landscapes and habitats. Much of it is very urban: industry, houses, shopping centres and sprawl in general. But probably half of the area is natural (after a fashion) including open water, marshes, woodlands, abandoned fields and farmland; in the olden days it would have been a mix of quite different proportions and characteristics.

I was assigned an area that I was mostly unfamiliar with. Before setting out I spent an hour or so of map-time trying to understand what to expect and the count moderator gave me some helpful advice.

After an hour and a half slogging up and down some disarmingly steep slopes and following a winding forest trail on difficult footing, I’d seen very little. Ninety minutes work and little more than two Carolina Wrens, A White-breasted Nuthatch and a couple of Downy Woodpeckers for my trouble. Moving on I traced the boundary of my patch following scenic roads but saw almost nothing. Just typical December birding.

With the morning running out and afternoon commitments in mind, I made my last stop, an arrow-straight, disused rail line that cut through a mature residential area. It was flanked by a rather unkempt park and was not far from a huge private golf course. The rail trail turned out to be very productive; a few adjacent homes had bird feeders and the unkempt park included a side trail that followed a dense and brushy watercourse. Water and thick cover are good places to find birds so I diverted to follow the side trail and soon came across a pair of Hairy Woodpeckers chattering noisily, a Red-bellied Woodpecker minding its own business and a group of five American Robins. While you might think robins are pretty commonplace, in fact, except in very sheltered places they are anything but in winter months; this scruffy little corner offered them hope for a well-fed winter.

My Christmas count list was growing. Along the trails I added more Carolina Wrens, Black-capped Chickadees and Dark-eyed Juncos. But I was also getting chilled and lunch started to call, so turning back, I stopped again to watch a very active and well-filled feeder in a small spruce-sheltered back yard. It took a while for a noisy, multi-generational, family group to move farther along the trail, but when they did the birds returned: American Goldfinches and juncos and then my birds of the day: first a trio of Pine Siskins which puzzled me for a moment because the first one I spotted looked a bit like a streaky goldfinch, but soon there were three of them and I was inwardly exultant – birds of the day! And then to cap it off a Red Breasted Nuthatch arrived. I didn’t linger, I was feeling a little nervous about being seen to be peering purposefully towards someone’s dining-room window. But I’d topped off my day and my Christmas Bird Count list with a couple of really nice sightings.

Pine Siskins are winter visitors and because they are patchy in their distribution, sighting them is ho-hum, old-hat to some and a minor event to others (I fit in the second category). Likewise, Red Breasted Nuthatches too can be a bit hit and miss. They prefer coniferous over broadleaf trees, are a bit more inclined to head south in winter and are smaller than their White-breasted Nuthatch cousins. Nuthatches, white or red, are nifty little birds, I never tire of the antics of the White-breasted ones that I see without fail on every census walk. I think you could call the White-breasted Nuthatch handsome, almost business-like in grey and white while the Red Breasted Nuthatches is a prettier bird, less business-like more coquettish. You be the judge with these photos.