Called also: SNOWBIRD; SLATE-COLORED SNOWBIRD; [DARK-EYED JUNCO,
AOU 1998]
Length -- 5.5 to 6.5 inches. About the size of the English
sparrow.
Male -- Upper parts slate-colored; darkest on head and neck,
which are sometimes almost black and marked like a cowl. Gray
on breast, like a vest. Underneath white. Several outer tall
feathers white, conspicuous in flight.
Female -- Lighter gray, inclining to brown.
Range -- North America. Not common in warm latitudes. Breeds in
the Catskills and northern New England.
Migrations -- September. April. Winter resident.
"Leaden skies above; snow below," is Mr. Parkhurst's suggestive description of
this rather timid little neighbor, that is only starved into familiarity. When
the snow has buried seed and berries, a flock of juncos, mingling sociably
with the sparrows and chickadees about the kitchen door, will pick up scraps
of food with an intimacy quite touching in a bird naturally rather shy. Here
we can readily distinguish these "little gray-robed monks and nuns," as Miss
Florence Merriam calls them.
They are trim, sprightly, sleek, and even natty; their dispositions are genial
and vivacious, not quarrelsome, like their sparrow cousins, and what is
perhaps best about them, they are birds we may surely depend upon seeing in
the winter months. A few come forth in September, migrating at night from the
deep woods of the north, where they have nested and moulted during the summer;
but not until frost has sharpened the air are large numbers of them seen.
Rejoicing in winter, they nevertheless do not revel in the deep and fierce
arctic blasts, as the snowflakes do, but take good care to avoid the open
pastures before the hard storms overtake them.
Early in the spring their song is sometimes heard before they leave us to woo
and to nest in the north. Mr. Bicknell describes it as "a crisp call-note, a
simple trill, and a faint, whispered warble, usually much broken, but not
without sweetness."