1062 U.S. NATIONAL MUSEUM BULLETIN 23 7 tart 2 



small springs near Paulina Lake, Deschutes County, Oreg. The water 

 is unpleasant to human taste. 



John M. Robertson (1931) says juncos are among the many birds 

 in California that utilize the small black seeds produced in great 

 abundance by the imported blue gum tree (Eucalyptus globulus). 

 L. L. Hargrave (1939) reports Oregon juncos wintering in Arizona 

 eat the exposed seed pulp of fully ripened pomegranates that remain 

 hanging upon the bush. E. D. Clabaugh (1930) suggests that to 

 trap Oregon juncos for banding "Chick-feed, cracked corn, bread 

 crumbs and bird-seed are all good baits." 



Behavior. — The Oregon jmico is a social bird. Except during the 

 breeding phase of the life cycle the species gathers in irregular-sized 

 flocks. I. N. Gabrielson and S. G. Jewett (1940) say: "After the 

 nesting season the birds roam the country in small family flocks 

 that gradually merge into larger groups that sometimes number 

 into the hundreds." 



J. Eugene Law (1924) observes the following of the August flocks 

 in the San Bernardino mountains of California: "The personnel of 

 these flocks of Juncos must be piu-ely fortuitous at this season. Fam- 

 ily ties seemed to be entirely broken except for an occasional late-born 

 youngster. The groups, if they can be called groups, were constantly 

 miUing about over any part of the meadow, and they did not leave a 

 spot in the same order or numbers in which they arrived. From num- 

 bers feeding on open ground scattering individuals frequently left 

 without distm-bing many which remained." 



Of the wintering flocks Mrs. Winifred S. Sabine (1956) writes: 

 "There appears to be no limit to the size of a foraging group. * * * 

 The entire flocking procediu-e is marked by the continual forming and 

 dissolving of groups of unpredictable size consisting of individuals 

 that consort together and are daily visitors at the feeding sites." 



The "purely fortuitous" composition of the flock remarked upon 

 by Law is questioned by Mrs. Sabine (1959) who finds that Oregon 

 juncos have a definite pecking order which she charts as she deter- 

 mined it among winter flocks. Mrs. Sabine's work suggests this 

 intolerance serves as a spacing device which aUows each bird of this 

 social species a necessary area of privacy, maintained by the dominant 

 bird of the pecking order and by each subordinate bird, thereby avoid- 

 ing conflict mth all others dominant over it. The increased intoler- 

 ance that begins mth spring serves to disperse the species for the 

 breeding phase of the life cycle. 



James G. Peterson (1942b) fed Oregon juncos cornmeal spread upon 

 the snow at his feeding station at Cuyamaca Peak, elevation 5,000 

 feet, in San Diego County, Calif. He reports: "As an individual 

 junco came to feed, the tail would be spread each time a morsel of food 



