Journal of Threatened Taxa | www.threatenedtaxa.org | 26 April 2022 | 14(4): 20935–20938

 

ISSN 0974-7907 (Online) | ISSN 0974-7893 (Print) 

https://doi.org/10.11609/jott.7779.14.4.20935-20938

#7779 | Received 08 December 2021 | Final received 13 March 2022 | Finally accepted 14 April 2022

 

 

 

Back after 40 years: a rare sighting of Eurasian Siskin Spinus spinus (Linnaeus, 1758) (Aves: Passeriformes: Fringillidae) in Himachal Pradesh, India

 

Paul Pop 1, Kuldeep Singh Barwal 2, Puneet Pandey 3, Harminder Pal Singh 4 & Randeep Singh 5

 

1 Zoology Department, Government College Bilaspur, Kosrian Sector, Bilaspur, Himachal Pradesh 174001, India.

2 Government College Ghumarwin, Shimla-Kangra Road, Bilaspur, Himachal Pradesh 174021, India.

3 Conservation Genome Resource Bank for Korean Wildlife (CGRB), Research Institute for Veterinary Science and College of Veterinary Medicine, Seoul National University, Seoul, Republic of Korea.

4 Department of Environment Studies, Panjab University, Sector 14, Chandigarh, Punjab 160014, India.

5 Amity Institute of Forestry and Wildlife (AIFW), Amity University, Sector 125, Gautam Buddha Nagar, Noida, Uttar Pradesh 201313, India.

1 paulvpop@gmail.com (corresponding author), 2 kuldeepsinghbarwal@gmail.com, 3 puneet.pandey09@gmail.com,

4 hpsingh_01@pu.ac.in, 5 rsingh@amity.edu

 

 

 

Editor: Carol Inskipp, Bishop Auckland Co., Durham, UK. Date of publication: 26 April 2022 (online & print)

 

Citation: Pop, P., K.S. Barwal, P. Pandey, H.P. Singh & R. Singh (2022). Back after 40 years: a rare sighting of Eurasian Siskin Spinus spinus (Linnaeus, 1758) (Aves: Passeriformes: Fringillidae) in Himachal Pradesh, India. Journal of Threatened Taxa 14(4): 20935–20938. https://doi.org/10.11609/jott.7779.14.4.20935-20938

 

Copyright: © Pop et al. 2022. Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.  JoTT allows unrestricted use, reproduction, and distribution of this article in any medium by providing adequate credit to the author(s) and the source of publication.

 

Funding: The research project ‘High resolution spatial mapping of bird phenology as an indicator of ecosystem health in relation to climate change in the Himalayas’, is funded by the National Mission on Himalayan Studies (Ref. No.: GBPNI/NMHS-2019-20/SG).

 

Competing interests: The authors declare no competing interests.

 

Acknowledgements: We thank the Himachal Pradesh Forest Department for granting us the permission to work in the GHNP and adjoining protected areas (research study permit no. 8295). We thank Faezal Yunus for proof-reading and bettering the manuscript.

 

 

 

The Eurasian Siskin Spinus spinus (Linnaeus, 1758) is a small and greenish-yellow finch, distributed largely in the westernmost and easternmost parts of Eurasia (Clement 2020). A vagrant species in India, it has been recorded only in four states so far, with the majority of records from Jammu & Kashmir. We report a very recent sighting of this species from Himachal Pradesh.

As part of a research project on flycatcher phenology in the Great Himalayan National Park Conservation Area (GHNPCA), PP (hereafter, ‘the observer’) conducts regular surveys in the region. During a reconnaissance survey for this research project, on 16 November 2021, he walked a narrow mountain path atop a ridge, adjacent to the village of Gushaini, which is within the ecozone of GHNPCA. He sighted a small passerine on the left side of the trail at 1157 h for ~20 seconds. The bird flew from ~52o north-east direction and perched on a low branch of a royal variety Apple tree Malus domestica less than two metres away, slightly below eye level, as a villager walked in the opposite direction of the observer, both near the bird. The bird visited the branch despite having sighted the two humans in the vicinity. This made it very easy to capture high-resolution pictures of the individual (Image 1). The bird may have been using the tree as a vantage point to assess the surroundings (Image 2). Soon, the bird moved to the top of an oak tree Quercus sp. ~20 m-tall in the centre of the ridge, approximately 10 m back in the direction the bird came from, after which the observer lost sight of the bird. Coordinates, elevation, and orientation were recorded using a Garmin Etrex 20x GPS with a pre-installed DEM layer for accuracy of elevation, and the photographs were taken using a Nikon D5600 with a 300 mm lens.

The observer immediately identified the bird as a male Eurasian Siskin Spinus spinus using a field guide (Grimmett et al. 2011). Shortly afterwards, he uploaded the sighting in a 20 minute eBird checklist made during that time. The identity was later confirmed using descriptions given in Clement (2020). No similar finch species has a black bib on the chin (Gaston & Chattopadhyaya 1980), the size of which is linked to their intraspecific dominance status and metabolic rates (Senar et al. 2000) and thus eliminating all other possibilities. Two subsequent visits to the same area (17 and 21 November 2021) did not yield any re-sighting of S. spinus. There are pine trees (Pinus sp.) nearby, which are known to be used by the species (Clement 2020).

We thoroughly searched several online platforms for previous sightings of this species within India. This included the following: published peer-reviewed and grey literature through academic search engines and simple query searches; citizen science platforms eBird, iNaturalist, and India Biodiversity Portal; and social online platforms Facebook (including dedicated bird groups), Instagram, Twitter, and Flikr. Two records were obtained from peer-reviewed publications. All other records were from eBird. The first and the latest sighting of the species within India has been in Himachal Pradesh, the first at Solang Nalla, which is around 109 km away (shortest distance, geodesic) from the current location (Image 3) (Gaston & Chattopadhyaya 1980). As Gaston & Chattopadhyaya (1980) had stated, the sightings of the species may have been overlooked because of the lack of surveys during winter, when they are usually seen. The location of the current sighting was along a trail that is not used by birdwatchers, as it is high above but parallel to the main route to the entry gate of GHNP from Gushaini, which they do take. This trail is almost exclusively used by locals. The combined effect of birdwatchers surveying less in the area during the cold winters, and that too, restricted to some trails, may have resulted in the missing of some sightings between these past 40 years.

This is the second sighting of the species within India in 2021. The previous sighting was further north-west in Srinagar, only 15 days prior. The current sighting is highly significant for several reasons. There are only around 10 other records of this species within the Indian boundary (Table 1). In Himachal Pradesh, this is the first sighting of the species in 40 years, and only the second sighting in recorded history. Of all the sightings in the western Himalaya, this is the most southeastern. Both sightings were in low altitude sites compared to all previous sightings in western Himalaya with the difference in elevation exceeding a kilometre in some cases. S. spinus exhibit irruptive migration (variable patterns in north-to-south migrations) based on the availability of food and possibly climate change (Arnaiz-Villena et al. 2009; Kanerva et al. 2020). For this reason, it is important to keep a lookout for this species in the coming years, as it can show if their phenology during irruptive migrations is advancing, which may be correlated with advancing spring arrival dates as a result of climate change.

 

 

Table 1. All sightings of Spinus spinus in India.

Date & time

No.

Sighting duration

Elevation (in m)

Observer

Sighting location

District

State

Sex

12.xi.2019;

U

U

U

2,526

Imran Shah

Batura Lake,  Passu, Gojal

Hunza

Jammu & Kashmir

F (&M?)

08.xi.2019;

U

U

U

2,648

Imran Shah

Borit Lake

 

Hunza

Jammu & Kashmir

M (&F?)

*11xi.2016; 1000 h

10

U; survey duration- 4 hours

2,648

Imran Shah

Borit Lake

 

Hunza

Jammu & Kashmir

F (&M?)

27.xi.2016;

0900 h

5

U; survey duration 5 hours

2,658

Imran Shah

Borit Lake

 

Hunza

Jammu & Kashmir

M(&F?)

01.iv.1995;

0600 h

1

U; survey duration 12 hours

2,309

Matti Rekilä

Karimabad/Gilgit

 

Hunza

Jammu & Kashmir

U

01.xi.2021;

1312 h

4

3 min

1,588

Mohammad Arif khan

Srinagar

 

Srinagar

Jammu & Kashmir

F(&M?)

25.i.1980;

1330 h

1

~15 min

2,681

Tony Gaston & S. Chattopadhyaya

 

Solang Nalla

Kullu

Himachal Pradesh

M&F

16.xi.2021;

1157 h

1

~20 s

1,687

PP (this report)

Gushaini

Kullu

Himachal Pradesh

M

29.iv.2010–04.v.2010; 0600–0800 h, 1100–1300 h, 1600–1800 h

≥ 1

U; survey duration- 10 min (multiple)

1,606, 1,948

**Utpal Singha Roy(?), Arijit Pal(?), Purbasha Banerjee(?) & some Masters student(s) (?)

Neora Valley National Park

Kalimpong

West Bengal

?

23.iv.2013;

1000 h

1

U; survey duration 8 hours

2,702

Craig Robson

Mandala Road (i.e., road from Dirang junction to Mandala village)

West Kameng

Arunachal Pradesh

M

07.iii.2017;

0530 h

5

U; survey duration 4 hours

2,475

Rofikul Islam

 

Eaglenest Wildlife Sanctuary

West Kameng

Arunachal Pradesh

M(&F?)

U-—Unknown | M—Male | F—Female | ?—Unclear.

All records are from eBird except the current sighting, first sighting in Himachal Pradesh (also available on eBird), and those in West Bengal, which are from published literature. *—Two sightings on the same day (one under the ‘Historical’ protocol in eBird) in Borit Lake reported by the same person is being considered as one, because they are likely the same individual(s) | **—Roy et al. (2011). Authors were contacted for further details about the sightings, but they are currently too busy to check the raw data or don’t have access to the data. To avoid double-counting, it is assumed that the sightings in the two areas surveyed for the study have been during the same day. Hence, this is considered as one record.

 

For images - - click here

 

References

 

Arnaiz-Villena, A., P. Gomez-Prieto & V. Ruiz-del-Valle (2009). Phylogeography of finches and sparrows, pp. 1–54. In: Rechi, L.J. (ed.): Animal Genetics. Nova Science Publishers, New York, 284 pp.

Clement, P. (2020). Eurasian Siskin (Spinus spinus), version 1.0. In: del Hoyo, J., A. Elliott, J. Sargatal, D.A. Christie & E. de Juana (eds.). Birds of the World. Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY, USA. Electronic version accessed 16 November 2021. https://doi.org/10.2173/bow.eursis.01

Gaston, A.J. & S. Chattopadhyay (1981).  Siskin (Carduelis spinus) in Solang Nalla, Himachal Pradesh. Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society 78(1): 386–387.

Grimmett, R., C. Inskipp & T. Inskipp (2011). Birds of the Indian Subcontinent. Christopher Helm, London, 556 pp.

Kanerva, A-M., T. Hokkanen, A. Lehikoinen, K. Norrdahl & J. Suhonen (2020). The impact of tree crops and temperature on the timing of frugivorous bird migration. Oecologia 193: 1021–1026. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-020-04726-5

Roy, U.S., A. Pal, P. Banerjee & S.K. Mukhopadhyay (2011). Comparison of avifaunal diversity in and around Neora Valley National Park, West Bengal, India. Journal of Threatened Taxa 3(10): 2136–2142. https://doi.org/10.11609/JoTT.o2542.2136-42

Senar, J.C., V. Polo, F. Uribe, M. Camerino (2000). Status signalling, metabolic rate and body mass in the siskin: the cost of being a subordinate. Animal Behaviour 59(1): 103–110. https://doi.org/10.1006/anbe.1999.1281