1036 U.S. NATIONAL MUSEUM BULLETIN 23 7 part 2 



tents as ragweed, bristlegrass , dropseedgrass, crabgrass, pigweed, and 

 goosefoot. 



In southwestern New York I have watched them feeding on the 

 fall cankerworm, Alsophila pometaria, in late autumn. During the 

 winter I once saw them eating the seeds of the wild black cherry, and 

 they often eat the seeds of hemlock and yellow birch from the snow 

 surface. Though they usually eat hemlock seeds from the ground, 

 they can and do extract them from the cones on the trees. They feed 

 avidly on the springtails (Collembola) that swarm abundantly about 

 the bases of the trees in February, and they will go out of their way 

 to capture, either on the snow surface or in the air, a small species of 

 gnat that hatches out of the small streams about this time. They 

 also join the early phoebes and bluebirds in preying on the late March 

 or early April hatch of the stonefly, Pteniopteryx nivalis. Francis H. 

 Allen wrote Mr. Bent of a large flock he watched at Cohasset Nov. 2, 

 1935, whose members "frequently flew into the air to catch flJ.es. 

 The flight was usually, if not always, from trees or bushes and not 

 from the groimd. They continued this off and on for nearly an horn-." 



Voice. — Of the song with which the jimco proclaims his territory, 

 F. H. Allen wrote Mr. Bent: "The jingling triU of this junco is well 

 known. It is usually a simple triU, but, as with some other birds 

 whose normal song is a single trill, one will occasionally be heard 

 singing two or even three trills on different pitches but joined together 

 to form a single song," In southwestern New York this song is 

 given mainly in February, March, and April before pair formation 

 and egg laying. After incubation begins it is heard much less fre- 

 quently, though there is a noticeable recrudescence during late June 

 and early July, and an occasional autumnal upsurge of it in October. 

 As Aretas A. Saunders (MS.) describes it: 



"The normal song of the northern slate-colored junco is a simple 

 triU, all on one pitch, or a series of rapid notes, sometimes barely 

 slow enough to count. It resembles that of the chipping sparrow, 

 but is rather more musical in quality. When the notes of the song 

 are slow enough to count they vary, in my records, from 7 to 23 notes, 

 averaging about 12. The length of the songs varies from 1.4 to 2.8 

 seconds, averaging about 1.9. The pitch varies from E''' to G''''. 



"There is a considerable amount of variation in junco songs from 

 the simple trill that is aU on one pitch. Some songs vary a bit up 

 or down in pitch, and some vary in time. I believe this bird shows 

 as great a tendency to vary fron the normal type of singing as does 

 the towhee. In the Adirondacks I heard a bird singing a song of 

 three prolonged whistles. I chased it about for parts of three days 

 and finally identified it as a junco. Possibly this bird got its song 



