By James Reddoch
When I step out of the house, birds scatter from the dooryard like so many leaves blown by the fall wind. I see more as I drive down Vernon Street. Flocks jump up from the side of Vernon Street and beeline it for the cover of the yellowing tamaracks and winterberry growing in the wetlands. This is a time for dark-eyed juncos, a type of sparrow. They are moving slowly from their breeding grounds that extend from Canada’s boreal forest down into our area. Flocks of 50 or more birds are common this time of year. They are ground feeders and forage under my feeders and in the grass and gravel along my driveway. Look for them along open roadsides and field edges.
When I was growing the up, these birds in the east were known as slate-colored juncos. At that time, there were four other species: white-winged, Oregon, gray-headed, and Guadalupe juncos. Just to make things confusing, the American Ornithologists’ Union decided these were actually all the same species and named the group of them ‘dark-eyed juncos.’ The original five groups are now considered subspecies. None of this matters to me. I just call them dark-eyed juncos or juncos for short. Better yet, you might like the name John James Audubon used, “snowbirds.” This is actually a great name for them. They will stay in our area in these large groups until the snows start to deepen. Then, because they are ground feeders, they will tend to drift further south.
Until then, watch for them scratching for seeds. They stand out when there is a light covering of snow. The males are a dark grey on their head, back, wings, tail, and onto their chest. Their jet-black eyes stand out. Their underparts are snow white. Females follow a similar color pattern except their dark parts have more brown and less of the dramatic gray of their male counterparts. Another surefire way to identify these birds is to watch closely when they fly away. If you see bright white feathers bracketing each side of their dark tails as they scatter, you will know you have snowbirds in your yard.
Sources:
Nolan Jr., V., E. D. Ketterson, D. A. Cristol, C. M. Rogers, E. D. Clotfelter, R. C. Titus, S. J. Schoech, and E. Snajdr (2020). Dark-eyed Junco (Junco hyemalis), version 1.0.
In Birds of the World (A. F. Poole and F. B. Gill, Editors). Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY, USA. https://doi.org/10.2173/bow.daejun.01
Photo Credit: © Steve Wolfe Photography