"banner" note, partly because it is uttered when the bird, in rising from the 

 ground or fluttering from twig to twig, displays the black and white banner 

 of its tail and partly because it sounds like the double clank-clank of a rail- 

 road switch when the heavy trucks pass over it. The connection between a 

 banner and a railroad switch may not be perfectly obvious at first, but any- 

 one who is not color-blind is hereby respectfully challenged to forget if pos- 

 sible the lurid colors which decorate the average assemblage of militant 

 switch-posts. 



Junco, while a reckless fellow to appearance, is not indifferent to the com- 

 fort of well-appointed lodgings. His nights are spent in the thickest cover 

 of cedar hedges, under logs or sheltered banks, along streams, or else buried 

 in the recesses of corn-shocks. One crisp November evening a year or two 

 ago, with my ornithological chum, Mr. Lynds Jones, I watched a com- 

 pany of Juncoes to bed. The birds would steal along from shock to shock 

 with twitter of inquiry until they found an empty bed or one to their taste, 

 and then would settle down into the top, not without considerable rustling 

 of dry leaves. When the company was quiet, we started out, boy-like to 

 undo the work. We saluted the shocks in turn with distantly flung clods 

 -which shivered to powder as they struck the stalks and made a noise like 

 the Day of Judgment. Out dashed Juncoes by twos and threes from every 

 shock thus rudely assaulted, and many were the pertinent remarks made in 

 most emphatic Junkese when the mischief-makers were discovered. Oh, 

 well, they really wer'n't scared quite out of their wits, and they had plenty 

 of time to get back into bed again after we were gone. Besides, variety is 

 the spice of life — even of a Snow-bird's. But the boys! Say, Jones, how 

 old are you, anyway? 



When the first warm days of March bring up the Bluebirds and the 

 Robins, the Juncoes get the spring fever. But they do not rush oflf to fill 

 premature graves in the still snowy north. The company musters instead 

 in the tree-tops on the quiet side of the woods, and indulges in a grand 

 eisteddfod. I am sure that the birds are a little Welch and that this term is 

 strictly correct. All sing at once a sweet little tinkling trill, not very pre- 

 tentious, but tender and winsome. Interspersed with this is a variety of 

 sipping and suckling notes whose uses are hard to discern. Now and then 

 also a kissing note, of repulsion instead of attraction, is heard, such as is 

 employed during the breeding season to frighten enemies. During the 

 progress of the concert some dashing young fellow, unable fully to express 

 his emotion in song, runs amuck and goes charging about through the woodsy 

 mazes in n fine frenzy, without, however, quite spilling his brains. Others 

 catch the infection, and I have seen a scare at once in a mad whirl of this 

 harmless excitement. 



Juncoes linger surprisinglv late sometimes, well on into April or even 

 May. Perhaps this is because they are so near the southern limit of their 



15 



