Pine siskin
Spinus pinus
Bird
A small streaked finch with yellow flashes in the wing and tail and a sharp, fine bill built for prising seed out of half-open cones and catkins. It is one of the most erratic birds on the continent: siskins follow the conifer seed crop rather than a calendar, so a wood that holds hundreds one winter can hold none the next.
Plan for this species
Location-fit plant set for Chicago, IL: host and specialist plants first, then nectar, fruit, seed, foliage, and shelter plants that still fit the current and mid-century climate read.
0 essential relationships / 6 supporting plants
Host/specialist links: 0
Forage/pollination links: 6
Shelter links: 0
Relationship roles: 1
Eastern white pine
Supporting / Seed plants
Works the cones for seed with a fine pointed bill, often hanging upside down to reach it. Flock size swings hugely between years with the size of the seed crop.
Sweet birch
Supporting / Seed plants
Works the hanging catkins for seed with a fine pointed bill, often hanging upside down to reach them.
White fir
Supporting / Seed plants
Takes fir seed from the cones, in flocks whose size tracks the seed crop rather than the season.
Paper birch
Supporting / Seed plants
Birch catkin seed is one of its staples away from the conifers, and a heavy catkin crop is one of the things that decides where a wandering flock spends the winter.
Oriental spruce
Supporting / Seed plants
Siskins are small-billed conifer-seed finches that move in irruptive flocks and work shed and shedding seed on spruce, and a mature coning Oriental spruce in a North American garden is a plausible stop on that circuit. Plausible rather than documented for the same reason as the nuthatch: the tie is to spruce seed generally, not to this species specifically.
Plains coreopsis
Supporting / Seed plants
Listed on the same footing as the goldfinch and for the same reason - siskins are small finches that feed heavily on composite seed in autumn and winter flocks, and standing coreopsis stems hold their achenes above snow. Cutting a meadow to the ground in September removes this entirely, which is the practical point of recording it.
Plants in the catalog
Seed plants · 11
A small nomadic conifer-seed finch of the boreal and montane forest, and one that moves in irruptive flocks in response to the size of the regional conifer seed crop rather than to weather. Fir seed is among the small winged conifer seeds it works, taken from the cones and from the ground beneath as the cones shatter.
A regular forager on Douglas fir seed, working the cones with a fine bill and arriving in numbers that swing with the size of the crop.
Works the cones for seed with a fine pointed bill, often hanging upside down to reach it. Flock size swings hugely between years with the size of the seed crop.
Works conifer seed in flocks whose numbers track the crop rather than the season, and takes fir seed both from the crown and from the ground once the cones have broken up and scattered it. A heavy cone year in a grand fir stand can pull siskins in from a long way off.
Siskins are small-billed conifer-seed finches that move in irruptive flocks and work shed and shedding seed on spruce, and a mature coning Oriental spruce in a North American garden is a plausible stop on that circuit. Plausible rather than documented for the same reason as the nuthatch: the tie is to spruce seed generally, not to this species specifically.
Birch catkin seed is one of its staples away from the conifers, and a heavy catkin crop is one of the things that decides where a wandering flock spends the winter.
Listed on the same footing as the goldfinch and for the same reason - siskins are small finches that feed heavily on composite seed in autumn and winter flocks, and standing coreopsis stems hold their achenes above snow. Cutting a meadow to the ground in September removes this entirely, which is the practical point of recording it.
Siskins work the same crop with a much finer bill, prising seed out of cones that have begun to open rather than forcing closed ones. Their irruptive movements track northeastern conifer seed the way crossbill movements do, so the two turn up together in a good red spruce year. Old cones persist on the tree and open in dry weather, which extends the resource well past autumn.
Takes fir seed in flocks in the same high-elevation spruce-fir forests, and like the crossbill it is an irruptive rather than a resident presence - a poor cone year in the mountains sends siskins far downslope and far south of where they nested.
Works the hanging catkins for seed with a fine pointed bill, often hanging upside down to reach them.
Takes fir seed from the cones, in flocks whose size tracks the seed crop rather than the season.
Range
Breeds in conifer forest across Alaska, Canada, the western mountains, and the northern and Appalachian United States. Outside the breeding season it is irruptive rather than migratory in the ordinary sense: when the northern seed crop fails, flocks push far south and east across the continent, and in good years they barely move at all.
Sources & citations
Cite this page
Use this citation for the Plotwright wildlife record. Use the source cards below to explore the references that informed its taxonomy, range, conservation, host plants, foraging, and habitat.
Plotwright. (n.d.). Pine siskin (Spinus pinus). Retrieved 2026, August 20, from https://plotwright.com/wildlife/pine-siskin
Sources used for this record
This record is compiled from the sources below.
Cornell Lab All About Birds: Pine Siskin
Species account for the conifer, birch, and alder seed diet, the acrobatic feeding, and the irruptive movements driven by seed crops.
GBIF: Spinus pinus
GBIF backbone key 5231635 is an exact accepted match for Spinus pinus in family Fringillidae.
iNaturalist: Spinus pinus
iNaturalist taxon 145304 is the active species record with community observation range data.
Wikipedia: Pine siskin
Corroborating reference for the seed diet including birch and alder catkins, and for the irruptive behaviour.