Siskins about to depart.

In the next couple of weeks the Siskins that have been in our garden in numbers will leave to go to their breeding grounds in the local conifer plantations. I will be sorry to see them go, because not only are they so colourful, but the lovely sounds they make fill the garden, especially when I am filling up the sunflower feeders in the morning. I know they are watching me from up in the large ash tree that is above the feeders because I can hear the volume increasing and when I look back as I’m walking away I can see them dropping down to feed. I have tried photographing them on a few different perches as detailed in previous blogs and I am always on the lookout for new perches when Susan and I are out walking. This week when we walking up the usual path behind our house we could see some fallen oak branches that had come down in the high winds a couple of weeks ago. Interestingly on one twig there were some ‘Galls’, these are formed when a particular type of wasp lays its eggs into an oak bud via its ovipositor. The chemicals in the oak bud react with chemicals laid by the wasp and these galls are formed. There are many varieties of these galls but these particular ones were formed because of the Oak Marble Gall Wasp and are consequently named Oak Marble Galls. They are about two cms in diameter and form a protective shell around the eggs. When the wasp’s eggs become grubs they bore out of this protective gall and then obviously in time become new wasps. I thought they would make a nice perch along with the dead copper coloured oak leaves that were on the same twig.



I also used some larch cones for another perch.



After that session I removed the perches and metal tubes,(previous blog), in anticipation for some quite bad weather that is forecasted for the rest of this week. My next perches will be hawthorn and blackthorn twigs when the time comes.