These are Pine Siskins, new visitors to our feeders this winter. We have a flock of 60 that arrive around 7 AM each morning and stay until dusk. Being a member of the finch family, they love to eat Niger seeds and Black-Oil Sunflower seeds. While we're not quite being eaten out of house and home, you certainly have to keep the feeders stocked up throughout the day.
The Siskens, about the size of a Goldfinch, are very friendly and you can get up very close to them; they have a nasal, rising "zzzreeeee" call and they sing all day.
While they are not easily found in our area, large flocks are being seen in many locations this winter. A flock of over 100 was seen last week along Highway 60 in Algonquin Park.
This week we got a lot of snow at the lake and there is still a lot of ice on the ground from the earlier freezing rain storm. The Loon Lake road is open to the winter turn-around. The Gregory Lane is plowed from the highway to the end of Moccasin Trail and the winter parking spot is cleared.
North facing roofs have just under 18 inches (45 cm) of snow on them and there's easily that amount on some ground locations.
The Trent Severn Waterway began replacing logs in the dams in the Burnt River system (ours) this past week. Their goal is to begin filling reservoirs with the strong base flow that exists in the rivers at this time and to capture the snow melt that is expected with the warmer weather forecast for the next two weeks.
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