THE SISKIN 235 



extremity of slender twigs. In autumn these flocks 

 are often very tame; we have sometimes experienced 

 difficulty in getting sufficiently far away to shoot 

 them nicely enough for preserving — they appear to 

 be as little fearful of man as Tits or Goldcrests. 

 Great numbers of Siskins still continue to be caught 

 in nets, but if the practice continues to the same 

 extent much longer there can scarcely be a doubt 

 that the bird will sensibly decrease in numbers. 

 Some years, we may remark, it is much more abund- 

 ant than others, and this fact was long ago remarked 

 by Gatke at Heligoland. Indeed he records one 

 migration of the Siskin in perfectly astonishing and 

 unprecedented numbers during the autumn of 1880, 

 on the 17th of September of that year, giving their 

 numbers at hundreds of thousands, in flocks like 

 clouds, and the whole island covered with them. 



The flocks of Siskins disband in early spring or 

 disappear from English haunts as the birds return 

 to continental nesting-grounds in the east and north. 

 About this time the song of the male is a welcome 

 feature in the life of our northern pine woods. The 

 first time we heard the song of the Siskin to anything 

 like advantage was in a Scotch pine forest between 

 Blair Athol and Struan, and the station-master at 

 the latter place informed us that the bird was 

 common enough in the district. The song is a 

 musical twittering one, very quickly uttered, melo- 

 dious if not very varied. It is said that the Siskin 



