Spruce siskin

Spruce siskin
Spruce siskin ( Spinus pinus )
Systematics
Subordination : Songbirds (passeri) Family : Finches (Fringillidae) Subfamily : Goldfinches (Carduelinae) Tribe : Carduelini Genre : Siskin ( Spinus ) Type : Spruce siskin
Scientific name
Spinus pinus
( Wilson, A , 1810)

The spruce siskin ( Spinus pinus ) is a North American species of finch .

features

The 13 cm long spruce siskin has brownish plumage with a pale underside, narrow brownish and wide yellow wing bands and yellow spots on the base of the tail. The male is usually more yellowish. The tail is forked.

Occurrence

The spruce siskin lives in coniferous forests, parks and meadows in North America from Alaska to the Mexican mountains. The northern populations overwinter in the south.

behavior

Outside of the mating season, the birds form flocks with several hundred animals. The diet includes seeds of birch , alder and cedar trees , but also insects and buds that they look for on the ground or on trees. Sometimes you can see the spruce siskin hanging upside down on spruce cones.

Reproduction

The spruce siskin breeds in small colonies . A shell nest in a conifer made of grass, roots and moss is padded with thistle wool, animal hair and feathers. The female keeps the clutch warm with three to four eggs almost continuously and therefore hardly leaves the nest. During this time it is supplied with food by the male.

Subspecies

Three subspecies have been described:

• S. p. pinus ( Wilson, A , 1810) - The nominate form is distributed from Alaska , Canada and the west and northeast of the United States .
• S. p. macroptera ( Bonaparte , 1850) - This subspecies is in the northwest and central Mexico spreads
• S. p. perplexa Van Rossem , 1938 - This subspecies occurs in southern Mexico to Guatemala .

literature

• Colin Harrison & Alan Greensmith: Birds. Dorling Kindersley Limited, London 1993, 2000, ISBN 3-831-00785-3
• Bryan Richard: Birds. Parragon, Bath, ISBN 1-405-45506-3
• Alexander Wilson: American Ornithology or, the Natural History of the Birds of the United States: Illustrated with Plates Engraved and Colored from Original Drawings taken from Nature . tape 2 . Bradford and Inskeep, Philadelphia 1810 ( online [accessed April 9, 2015]).
• Charles Lucien Jules Laurent Bonaparte : Conspectus generum avium . tape 1 . EJ Brill, Leiden 1850 ( online [accessed April 9, 2015]).
• Adriaan Joseph van Rossem: Descriptions of twenty-one new races of Fringillidae and Icteridae from Mexico and Guatemala . In: Bulletin of the British Ornithologists' Club . tape 58 , 1938, pp. 124-138 ( online [accessed March 19, 2015]).

Web links

Commons : Spinus pinus  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Spinus pinus inthe IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2017.3. Listed by: BirdLife International, 2016. Retrieved January 25, 2018.
• Videos, photos and sound recordings of Carduelis pinus in the Internet Bird Collection

Individual evidence

1. ^ IOC World Bird List Finches, euphonias
2. ↑ Alexander Wilson, p. 133, plate 17, figure 1.
3. ^ Charles Lucien Jules Laurent Bonaparte, p. 515.
4. ^ Adriaan Joseph van Rossem, p. 58.