Now we are in to March I am guessing that our Siskins will be leaving us pretty soon for their breeding territories. They do breed in Devon but I have no way of knowing where my Siskins come from. This lack of knowledge is very frustrating, I would love to know where they originated and where they are going back to. It is known that British Siskin populations are swelled by birds from Northern Europe and they are also known to be very mobile as a species and even though I have had so many with me this winter it is not to say that this will be repeated next year. At the moment all I do know is that they are seemingly moving around in pairs and the males are singing which is something I was not aware of when I first saw them in Decemeber.
I decided that I would continue with my portrait “set-up”. I thought it would be good to show how I took this photograph.

 
This is obviously a “set-up” situation. I have a feeder placed amongst some nice photogenic perches. The feeder has been hanging from them for several weeks and the birds are well and truly used to seeing these photographic props near the food source. Near to the feeding station I leave my pop-up chair hide as you can see in the photo, again so the birds are well and truly used to it. By doing this you can literally put the hide inches from the feeder with hardly any affect whatsoever. However if you are very close the birds are spooked, or can be by the noise of the cameras motor focusing and also even the noise of the shutter can send them packing, but they soon return.

The birds are used to the hide and even if I move it around it does not appear to have any affect whatsoever. At the moment the garden is full of spring flowers so I picked a few and placed the crocus on the branch in the most natural way possible. I then re-positioned the feeder to try to encourage any bird visiting to land on the chosen perch. It was then just a matter of waiting for a bird to oblige and then quickly focusing the camera on the subject having taken a few test shots before. As you can see it does work but there was quite a long wait involved until a bird eventually settled in the correct place.
I was using a 90mm Macro Lens because I like the results from this lens if I can get close enough.