THE SLATE-COLORED JUNCO. 



77 



4 or 5, white or greenish white, speckled freely with reddish and dark brown. 

 Av. size, .-/-j x .58 (19.6 x 14.7). 



General Range. — North America, chiefly east of the Rockies, breeding in the 

 hilly portions of the Northern States northward. South in winter to the Gulf 

 States. 



Range in Ohio. — Abundant winter resident. Possibly breeds sparingly 

 (formerly "in great numbers." — Kirtland) in northeastern part of state. 



A summer in Laurentia is certainly good for the health, for when Junco 

 returns in the fall he is chock-full of animal spirits and good cheer. He is a 

 very energetic bod}- at any time of year, but his high spirits are especially 

 grateful to the beholder when the numbing cold of winter has silenced all 

 feathered kind but the invincible Tree Sparrows and Snow-birds. The plum- 

 age of the Junco exactly matches his winter surroundings — "Leaden skies 

 above; snow below," Mr. Parkhurst says — and he proceeds to make himself 

 thoroughly at home. Not content to mope about within the limits of a single 

 brush-patch, like Tree Sparrows, large companies of Snow-birds rove rest- 

 lessly through tree-tops and weedy dingles as well, and cover considerable 

 areas in a day. 



On such occasions, and commonly, they employ a peculiar twitter of 

 mingled greeting and alarm, — a double note which escapes them wdienever any 

 movement of wing is made or contemplated. I have called this the "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 railroad 

 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 anyone who is 

 not color-blind is hereby respectfully challenged to forget if possible the lurid 

 colors which decorate the average assemblage of militant switch-pi sts. 



Junco, while a very reckless fellow to appearance, is not indifferent to 

 the comfort 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 company of Juncoes to bed. The birds would steal along from shock to 

 shock with titters of inquiry until they found an empty bed or one to their 

 taste, and then would settle well 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 the 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. 



