(_Junco hyemalis_) Finch family
_Called also_: SNOWBIRD; SLATE-COLORED SNOWBIRD
_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 tail
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."