Green-Morph Pine Siskin Lake Pauline Vt

I first noticed that one of the siskins had more yellow/green color on the back of it's head that went all the way down to it's tail back in late Dec when the siskins first showed up. Then in early January reports started to show up all over E-bird about green morph siskins. I wanted to photograph it but it was never around when I was in the house or it came when I was working, this when on all winter, I figured it was long gone. Then about 7:oc last night I saw the bird and was able to grab a few images, not as vivid color as on a gray winters day but you can see the yellow cast on the back. But as you can see the color is somewhat muted because the bird was preening and all fluffed up, it spooked before I could get any images of the bird showing the color better. Owell.....better than nothing.Sibley's refers to it as a Yellow Adult, it's also referred to as a Green-Morph Pine Siskin. Don and Lillian Stokes had this info about Green-Morph Pine Siskins :
http://stokesbirdingblog.blogspot.com/2009/01/green-morph-pine-siskin.html
In any case after looking at the images of the so-called Green-Morph siskin on the Internet I think the bird that has been coming here all winter fits into that group just fine as an example of a very average green-morph Pine Siskin.
These last two images come from Pat Folsom,(thanks Pat) who email me after last nights post to VT bird, wondering if my green siskin looks anything like the one she photographed back in March in her yard. These are great images Pat and show a very good example of how strong the color can be in some birds and really show how much the green morph can very from bird to bird.
I googled “green-morph pine siskin” and found more helpful information on the Zen Birdfeeder
, she had some good links to photos and other reports of the green morph siskin. If you are still curious check Boreal Birds I found this blog to be very informative and well written.

Anyhow one of the great things about birding is I'm always learning something new and I love that, each day birding has its own little surprise whether in your yard or out running the roads, it's birding at its best for me!

Peter

Thanks to Pat Folsom for the use of her images

All rights reserved © 2009 Peter Manship