Human snow birds, my friends from Lake Villa included, are off to Florida, but avian snow birds are right here in northern Illinois. They’ll be with us until at least early April, if not longer.
They are dark-eyed juncos, neatly plumaged little sparrows with pink bills, dark heads, backs and throats complemented by whitish bellies and breasts, almost the color of snow. When the junco flies, it flashes white outer tail feathers, like a beacon of light on a dismal gray day.
In yards, juncos often hang out beneath feeders. These handsome harbingers of winter find seeds that messy birds like mourning doves and house finches drop from the feeders to the ground.
What I love most about juncos is that even a casual nature watcher can find them, and enjoy their spritely antics on a dreary day. Juncos give birders something to talk about, to delight about, to gripe about, and to wish about through the long, cold months.
Delight occurs when someone announces they saw their first junco of the season, sometime in October, although occasionally as early as late August. Facebook and Illinois birding pages light up with notes about when the first junco was spotted. “Saw my first junco, October 21 in DuPage County,” one birder writes, with another responding, “I saw my first one two weeks ago,” and another complains she hasn’t seen a junco yet this season.
By mid-November, though, lots of birders and backyard bird feeders are seeing juncos daily in our region.
If you spend any time watching juncos hopping and pecking on the ground or above the snow in your yard, you’ll realize they don’t all look exactly the same. The young of the year and females are typically almost brownish instead of slate gray like the male, and you’ll notice variations of these as well.
Birders also look for the rare “Oregon” junco, a subspecies that lives out west. This junco has a black hood, chestnut back and rusty-colored sides. Photos of possible “Oregon” juncos appear on Illinois birding websites in winter, and congratulations are offered for the discoveries.
“Oregon” junco is one of up to 15 different subspecies, each with subtle plumage differences. They have long entertained researchers studying reasons why the same species has so many color variations.
They entertain me in winter as they hop, rather than walk, and scratch or peck at leaf litter or at small shrubs against some snow to find seeds. Letting some leaves exist throughout the winter on the lawn and not trimming plants to the ground provides food for the juncos and other hungry winter critters.
On the first solid snow in November this year, I watched at least eight juncos vying for food in various ways in my yard. Though considered ground feeders, one junco perched momentarily on a peanut feeder and snatched a morsel before flying away. Another hopped on the squirrel baffle where snow had fallen and seeds from the feeder atop that. Yet another perched on a tall goldenrod full of seeds and munched on them.
You might also notice a hierarchy as certain juncos dominate the good feeding spots, chasing others away, with a reminder that it’s not their turn to eat.
The juncos we see in winter breed in Alaskan and Canadian forests as well as in the Appalachian Mountains, but not anywhere in Illinois. They leave when the snow starts falling, covering their food sources, and find it a little easier to locate food in our region in winter.
I love walking through woodlands and natural areas in winter, listening for their intermittent buzzy calls, then finding a small group of juncos scattered on the forest floor, appearing almost “warm” on a cold day. In winter, juncos, like some other bird species, grow denser coats of feathers, which trap body heat. At night, they roost or sleep in evergreen trees, branch piles, or tall grasses.
Sometimes, as spring approaches, you will notice the juncos are thinking of something else besides food. They begin singing a lovely trill, a courtship song. It’s a happy announcement for me that spring might be on its way. As the inclement weather lingers, I wonder, “Isn’t it time for the juncos to head back north?”
And yet, on an early May day during the annual spring bird count, there’s hope that I might find the last departing junco and have a new late-date spring record for a snowbird in Illinois.
Sheryl DeVore has worked as a full-time and freelance reporter, editor and photographer for the Chicago Tribune and its subsidiaries. She’s the author of several books on nature and the environment. Send story ideas and thoughts to sheryldevorewriter@gmail.com.
