This is a frequent winter visitor to bird feeders in most of the country. Because of their distinctive seasonal migration to the south, hence escaping winter, they are often called “snowbirds,” a name also used for people who go south to leave winter behind. They are very similar to sparrows but with a darker head and back, and a gray throat set off from the white abdomen. White is seen on the sides of the tail in flight. The beak is pink.
The most common subspecies is designated as the Slate-colored Junco because of the dark gray back, resembling the smooth metamorphic rock once closely associated with the school room “chalk board.” The scientific name is Junco hyemalis. The various subspecies are distinguished by color, some with more brown on the back, and brownish to pinkish sides or flanks. They are all considered one species, showing interbreeding where ranges overlap, and the species belongs to that very large order of perching birds and also to the finch-like birds of the sparrow family.
The Dark-eyed Juncos build their nests in coniferous forests from eastern Canada to Hudson Bay and range all the way west to Alaska. Birds of western subspecies may be found in mountains all year, but higher in the summer. The song is a musical trill that is high-pitched and reminiscent of the song of the Chipping Sparrow. The call is a stip . . . tzeet . . . tsitit tit. It calls the latter sound especially in flight.
Although they flock in winter, along with other sparrows, Downy Woodpeckers, and Black-capped Chickadees, the juncos pair off in nesting season when they lay three to six brown-spotted pale green to blue eggs. The nest is not far above ground but concealed in vegetation growing on the floor of the forest. The nest is deeply concave and constructed of grass and other vegetation, or even bark that is shredded off. They eat insects in the summer, in addition to their usual fare of seeds, like millet, chickweed, and buckwheat. As with all perching birds, which have feet adapted for grasping, juncos must hop when on the ground. They search near the ground in leaf litter, and may dart upward for small insects.
It is thought there may be more than 600 million juncos in North America, which may be not surprising, considering they have three broods a year and incubation lasts less than two weeks. The oldest individual junco was recorded when a specimen tagged in 1991 was recaptured ten years later, and thought to be eleven years and four months old. This was in West Virginia, the same state where it was tagged (www.allaboutbirds.com/guide/darkeyedjunco).
John James Audubon painted the little grayish to black birds in his masterful The Birds of America (with foreword and caption commentary by William Vogt, MacMillan Company, 1942). Audubon referred to them as “Snow Birds” and painted a pair in a swamp ash tree.
The American who first described the bird to the Swedish taxonomist Carolus Linnaeus had viewed it in the winter, so Linnaeus gave it the species name hyemalis referring to winter, when he named it in 1758. The male in the painting shows the distinctive white on the side of the tail.
Other good sources show photographs, as does National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Birds (Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, 1998), or paintings, as does National Audubon Society: The Sibley Guide to Birds (Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, 2000).
