A New Month - Sunday Wandering
Sunday 1 March
It’s the First of March …
"Why," the man in the brown hat laughed at him, "I thought everybody knew 'Rabbit, rabbit, rabbit.' If you say 'Rabbit, rabbit, rabbit'—three times, just like that—first thing in the morning on the first of the month, even before you say your prayers, you'll get a present before the end of the month."
* Found in Lynd, Robert (1922). Solomon in all his glory
Seen this week
… several weeks before it should be here, was a Northern Flicker - a migrating Woodpecker species - pausing in the garden for a drink. What was it doing here before the end of February? Although occasional birds are seen in a Montreal winter - we actually had one in the garden on New Years Day - they are most unusual. According to eBird, we have a recorded frequency of just 2.8% in February with populations not starting to significantly increase until April, reaching a peak in early May at 52%. Smart bird, anyway and very welcome. It was back again for a drink the next day.
Now - lets delve into the lives of Junco hyemalis … a bird that is hard to avoid just now.
Juncos (Junco hyemalis)
These are little grey - or is that gray - Sparrows who come for the winter and will shortly be away back north. Let’s have a look at their lives before they depart. These are lovely birds that we really enjoy having around during the cold months - often well over a dozen can be found in our garden at almost any time of the day, and plenty more in the neighbourhood. They usually arrive here a little before the snows and leave just after it has melted. Always busy.
The genus Junco, is in the New World sparrow family Passerellidae. They were first described by Carl Linnaeus in 1758 as Fringilla hyemalis. Subsequently they were moved to the genus Juncus. Latin for rush, apparently - what’s the connection there, I wondered? As far as I can tell, the naturalists who first described these birds noted that they were frequently found in or around rushy habitats. The genus name Junco ultimately traces back to the Latin juncus (“rush”) via Spanish junco, and was chosen because of the rush‑filled places they were seen … which is good were it not that whatever they were doing in the past, most Junco species actually prefer dry, open woodland or shrubby habitat rather than dense rush beds. Next question, why Spanish? These are near Arctic birds and not many native Spanish speakers up there. Was the name selected by a Spaniard? At this point, I climbed out of the rabbit hole before I got stuck.
The genus Juncus is still “a nightmare for systematists.” New genetic studies continue to refine its limits - the safest assumption is that there while there are many subspecies of Junco, the most widely used practical classification recognizes just two species - the Dark-eyed Junco and the Yellow-eyed Junco. Somewhere I have photographs of the latter that we saw a couple of decades ago far to the south near Portal in Arizona. Heaven knows where the photo is though.
Dark-eyed Juncos breed across most of temperate North America, from the Arctic south to the high‑elevation Rockies and Appalachians. Winters are spent to the south of their breeding territory - here in Montreal for example. The population is put at some 630 million individual birds - making it one of the most abundant forest birds on the continent. Despite those numbers the species has declined in from historical highs, probably due to habitat changes and all the other pressures that birds have to contend with.
Back in my working days I attended a scientific meeting in Salt Lake City which had the obligatory day off for sightseeing. Some of us took a rental car high into the mountains where we found a strange little bird none of we easterners recognized but which turned out to be a western subspecies of our “Slatey-backed” Dark-eyed Juncos. Very, very different. There are some dozen recognized subspecies including slate‑colored, Oregon, pink‑sided, gray‑headed, white‑winged, and red‑backed). The marked colour and behavior differences are thought to reflect post-glacial expansion into new habitats after the last Ice Age.
Individuals are around 15 cm long with an 18–25 cm wingspan. Easily identified in the field, often as they fly away from you, by the flash of their white outer tail feathers. Males and females are visually alike while juveniles are a streaky brown. In summer, much of their diet consists of insects and in winter, they feed heavily on seeds of weeds and grasses, plus whatever they can find on garden feeders supplemented by occasional berries. They forage by hopping and scratching in leaf litter and sometimes fly up to snatch insects from vegetation. Here in the snow they rely on garden feeders and dry seed heads sticking above the surface. Outside of breeding season they form flocks with social hierarchies in which dominant birds tend to be larger, older males, with juveniles and females lower in the pecking order.
Responsive evolution. Studies of a UCLA campus population showed measurable morphological change of shorter wings and stubbier beaks within just a few decades. This is suggested to be driven by access to abundant human‑provided food.
I have often written here about those splendid animals, Raccoons. Someone else likes them as much as I do:
Wrens
The writer of this piece was aged ten at the time and was all alone in an Alaskan forest … just imagine:
Should you want to read the rest of the article, the link is on the graphic above.
Guerrilla Rewilding or “Experimental Ecology”
https://biologist.rsb.org.uk/urgent_protest_or_dangerous_gamble.html
Birding is good for our brains
* NEXT SUNDAY - We will be thinking about going wild gardening, now that spring is getting just a little closer. Time to plan.
Juncos, one of the birds I would most want to see if I ever visit north America again.
I do enjoy watching the juncos before they leave again in the spring. In the fall, they are the first sign that winter is coming. I've noticed that they have adapted their behavior to the feeders. They used to only feed on the ground, under the feeders, but now they are flying up to the feeders, if they can land on it. They aren't very good at hanging on to the sides. They are also one of a few species that doesn't like to share, and will chase away other juncos from the food source.