Last year, 2020, on Oct. 18, with a heavy frost the snowbirds arrived in our yard. The year prior, 2019, they arrived on Oct. 15. This year the snowbirds, aka a dark-eyed junco (once known as the ...

Here are two well-known facts about slate-colored juncos. First, they are among the most common birds in North America. Second, they are among the most easily identified. The second is not surprising, ...

The birds have been observed bathing in powdery snow. One of the most interesting things about juncos is their regional color variation. There are five variants of junco in North America which were ...

GRAND FORKS – The dark-eyed junco is another of the signature birds of October. They may be more abundant than last week’s bird, the Canada goose – and perhaps as abundant as the snow goose, which ...

SOUTH NEWFANE Juncos are everywhere! Throughout the winter, the flock visiting my feeders was about 25. With the return of the snows last week, their numbers have exploded. A hundred or more? Counting ...

“Indeed, there is not an individual in the Union who does not know the little Snow-bird.” — John James Audubon Summertime is falling down, winter is closing in. The juncos — what Audubon called ...

I suspect the great naturalist and pioneer ornithologist was optimistic in his estimation of junco familiarity. His “snow-bird” is now formally known as the dark-eyed junco, and back in Audubon’s time ...

Most winters, the dark-eyed junco is one of the most common birds at my feeder. While I rarely see juncos in summer, except when hiking in the mountains, small flocks of juncos typically appear soon ...

There are times in life when you just have to thumb your nose at rules established by others. That was how my wife felt while sitting at a bird feeder in Portal, Arizona. She was going for a “big ...

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The best field mark for the junco, the bird books say, is the sharp division between gray plumage forward and above and white below and to the rear. This is indeed an excellent field mark. Definitive, ...

Since retiring from Quarry Hill, unquestionably the bird I caught most often would be the American goldfinch. This was probably for a couple reasons. One is that Whitewater Park, where I have done ...