1038 U.S. NATIONAL MUSEUM BULLETIN 237 part 2 



though the white rectrices where used as a threat on this occasion, a 

 display I had never before seen except in momentary flashes." 



Forbush (1929) describes how j uncos he watched near the top of 

 Mt. Washington in early August "drank from 'the Stream of a Thou- 

 sand Falls/ which is formed by the melting of the snow, and then 

 bathed in the frigid waters with much fluttering and splashing of 

 spray, reminding me of other Juncos which I have watched in mid- 

 winter, similarly engaged in bathing, but in light dry snow, just as 

 other sparrows take dust baths in hot weather." 



W. S. Sabine (1957) comments on the flight behavior of a flock 

 of juncos on their visits to a feeder in Ithaca, N.Y., on late winter 

 afternoons. She found the birds, at what was probably their last 

 feeding of the day, always departed in a regular pattern. As each 

 bird finished feeding it perched quietly for a minute or so at the sta- 

 tion, then joined others assembled in an arbor vitae clump about 40 

 feet away where they "made small movements" for about 5 minutes. 

 The whole flock then left the arbor vitae together, closely following 

 one another to an adjacent leafless deciduous tree, climbed high in 

 it, and then flew from tree top to tree top along a ridge to the north- 

 east, always in the same direction. She concludes "It seems a rea- 

 sonable conjecture that the flock had a common goal, and this in turn 

 suggests the hypothesis that a common roost may be a feature of the 

 integration of junco flocks." 



Hamilton (1940), also at Ithaca, found juncos roosting at night in 

 winter "on the ground at the base of a Taxus thicket." While night- 

 banding robins near Olean on April 13 I flushed four juncos from 

 roosts 3 to 8 feet from the ground in thick Norway spruces. On Dec. 

 28, 1960 I flushed a junco after dark from a nest 2 feet from the 

 ground in a hemlock hedge near my house, and on Jan. 25, 1961 I 

 again flushed a bird from the same nest at night. Thus, old nests 

 occasionally function as winter roosting sites. 



Field marks. — A slate-colored bird slightly smaller and more slender 

 than a house sparrow, with uniform gray head, back, breast, and sides 

 contrasted sharply against the white beUy, this junco is seldom con- 

 fused with any other species except some of its western relatives, such 

 as the Oregon junco, which has a much darker head contrasting with 

 a browner back. The pale biU is conspicuous in the field, and the 

 white outer tail feathers are especially prominent in flight. 



Enemies. — Essentially birds of open woodlands and forest edges, 

 the juncos are subject to attack by accipitrine hawks and other 

 predators. Red squirrels, chipmunks, weasels, and martens must 

 take some eggs and young from the nests. Northern shrikes harry 

 the wintering flocks fairly frequently. Cowbird parasitism is appar- 



