. . . A small tragedy, as well. The other day I found a siskin, a female bird, lying dead just outside our back door. I am not sure what was the cause of death, but a small amount of blood was visible on the tail feathers, leading me to speculate that maybe it was killed by one of the local cats, and left there perhaps as a sort of gift, or maybe just because the bird's killer was disturbed.
So there's one mystery; but the other mysterious thing is that a siskin should be there at all, since we have never seen a live siskin in our garden in all the time we've been here. There will be siskins not too far away, to be sure - when we lived just up the way in Brookfield Road, we had siskins all winter, as very regular visitors to our feeding station. They are delightful small finches, very acrobatic and with an attractive plumage. As they quite often flock with goldfinches - and we have no shortage of goldfinches, with fifteen our highest total at one time so far this winter - we had hoped to see them here, but it's sad that the only one seen so far is dead.
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