Alaska Department of Fish & Game information officer Riley Woodford was in Juneau the last week of March and happened upon a scrap of hide at a pullout near Montana Creek. Woodford says he walked down to the creek and when he returned saw siskins collecting hair and fur.
He set his camera down and waited for the birds to return, which they did minutes later. Woodford says, "They didn't care about the camera. A few juncos were collecting as well."
Pine siskins, part of the finch family, are brown and streaky with touches of yellow on the wings and tail. These nomadic birds are seen across Alaska and Canada and sometimes across the western mountains and northern parts of the Lower 48.
Pine siskins protect their eggs from the cold by tightly insulating their nests. These pine siskins, in a video from Fish and Game, collect hair from a deer hide for a spring nest.