_THE SLATE-COLORED JUNCO. os 
4 or 5, white or greenish white, speckled freely with reddish and dark brown. 
EN ESIZE} 777, X25 ON (LO! OpxaeNA YZ) e 
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 body 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 whenever any 
movement of wing is made or contemplated. 1 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-posts. 
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, 
