Pine Siskin movements

I just ran across a neat article on pine siskin migration from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Project FeederWatch. During the winter of 2008-09, there was a large irruption of pine siskins into the northeastern and southern states. Banders managed to catch and band a total of 31,004 siskins between September 2008 and July 2010. Of these banded siskins, 46 were recaptured again or their bands were recovered. When the siskins were banding location and recapture/recovery location were mapped (see below), two interesting trends stood out.

Birds banded in the south during the irruption were later encountered almost due north. Birds banded in the northeast, on the other hand, were later encountered almost due west in Washington, Oregon and western Canada.

As more siskins are recaptured, it will be interesting if this pattern holds of if other patterns emerge with additional data.

For the full article, follow this link.