The Snowbird’s trill
By Warren Nelson
When I was just a young boy, I can vividly remember my neighbor talking about all the “snowbirds and junco birds” that we had at our feeders in the fall. I had no idea what he was talking about, at least not until I got a little older and wiser.
Until the late 1920’s, the Junco, a bunting, was known as the Snowbird, the darker male being referred to as the Black Snowbird and female being referred to as the Gray Snowbird. It seems that Mark Catesby first called it a Snowbird in his “Birds of Colonial America” in 1747. And it was from that reference that Linnaeus gave the Junco the scientific name of “Junco Hyemalis” which is Greek for “winter”. And “junco” comes from one of two different Latin words: either from “junco” which means “rush” due to the fact that in Europe the buntings like to nest among the rushes or from “juncus” which means “seed”. Actually, it was given the name Snowbird because they knew that it nested high above the tree line in the New Hampshire and all across Canada and high into the Arctic Circle and they thought the color of the Junco was “leaden above and snow below”. When they changed the name to Junco in the 1920’s they didn’t know how many different species of Juncos that they had since there were so many different color phases. At first, they thought that there were at least six species but over the years, they have determined that there are only two species, the Dark-eyed Junco which is what we see throughout the United States and the Yellow-eyed Junco which is found primarily in Mexico.
Our own Dark-eyed Junco is about 6 and one-quarter inches long. It is a member of the finch family, related to the sparrows and buntings. Although there are several color variations, the male is generally dark gray over the head and back, white underneath and a pinkish bill. The female is the same size and shape as the male but is a grayish/brown over the back and head, white below and a pink bill.
Although most of the Juncos migrate further south in the winter, there are some that do over winter here. They do nest in Minnesota in the northeast and north-central parts with nesting confirmed as far south as northern Aitkin County. This is about as far south as they nest in North America. The Snowbird nests primarily on the ground at the base of a tree or bush or sometimes along stream banks where it is quite woody or covered with rushes. The female lays three to five white eggs with brownish speckles and she alone incubates the eggs until they hatch out in twelve days. In another twelve days the young take their first flights. Although infant mortality is high among all of our songbirds, banded birds have been known to live up to eight years.
Now is the time of the year to see the big flocks of these wonderful little birds and listen to their constant thrill, either while they feed on weed seed along the roadways or when they feed under your feeders. And if you are feeding the birds, don’t forget to throw a little seed on the ground since the junco is basically a ground feeder. The spring clean up is a small sacrifice for the joy of birds in your yard.
