Field Notes––

Juncos’ Return Means Winter Is On The Way

By Dottie Evans

          The North Wind doth blow,

          And we shall have snow,

          And what will the robin do then,

          Poor thing!

The first lines of the familiar nursery rhyme are laden with foreboding because 16th Century English winters must have been bitterly cold. The lowly robin must “sleep in the barn to keep itself warm, and hide its head under its wing, poor thing!”

Clearly, those English robins didn’t migrate south for the winter like their American cousins do.

Here in Connecticut, the birds are already coping with the arrival of nor’easters, cold weather, and the possibility of snow. By the end of October, most have either fled south for the duration (songbirds, hummingbirds, swallows, and blackbirds) or they are hunkering down and will stay put (sparrows, titmice, woodpeckers, cardinals, and finches).

Those that stay, including some hardy bluebirds and a few robins who hide out in sheltered thickets, will live off the fat of the land. They’ll forage, grazing on seeds, berries, or the occasional slug or beetle pried from tree bark or rotting log. Take advantage of whatever bounty they find at backyard birdfeeders.

A third group neither leaves nor stays, but migrates south to Connecticut from breeding grounds at the tree line from Alaska to Newfoundland. Known as dark-eyed juncos, they are also called snowbirds because their reappearance on the local scene is a sure signal that winter is coming.

Juncos who spend summer in Canada respond to the shorter October days by flocking south to bask in the relative warmth of a Connecticut winter. Just when most of our human friends whom we also call “snowbirds” begin packing for the drive to Vero Beach or Fort Lauderdale, Fla., the juncos arrive.

We first see them under the feeder pecking seed off the ground. When they fly into or out of the yard, their outer tail feathers flash a bit of white, and their charcoal gray backs and wings blend softly into the muted grays and browns of the autumn landscape.

Only when it snows do the juncos seem totally at home in their element. Watch them flitting helter-skelter around the snow-covered shrubbery or diving with abandon into the deepest drifts, and you’d swear they are enjoying themselves.

Juncos usually winter in the same 10- to 12-square-mile area year after year, meaning that the birds you see today foraging among the chickadees and titmice were most likely the ones you saw last year. There is a strict pecking order around the feeder that is effectively established by threatening stance, yawning beak, and flared-out wing-feathers. The males go first, the females go next, immature birds go last and no cutting in.

Until 1983, juncos were listed as four separate species: white-winged junco (Montana and the Dakotas); slate-colored junco (East Coast); gray-headed junco (Rocky Mountains); and Oregon junco (West Coast). After that date because there was interbreeding where the ranges met, the Committee on Classification and Nomenclature of the American Ornithologists’ Union decided to lump them all into one complex species called the dark-eyed junco.

If you have ever participated in either the Audubon Christmas Bird Count or Great Backyard Feeder Watch that takes place every February, you know that juncos always appear near the top of numbers list. This is true nationwide with the exception of the Southeast and South Central region.

All winter long, they stick around to keep us company during the coldest days. Then suddenly one April morning when the sun is shining brightly and the snow has melted away, we’ll notice the juncos have gone.

It seems so unlikely they would fly into town just in time to share our impossibly long, gray, snowbound, ice-laden winters. Why not fly a little farther south while they’re at it?

But what do we know. We’re not juncos.