442 Bird - Lore 



OREGON JUNCO 



The Oregon Junco is -a subspecies of the eastern Slate-colored Junco, and 

 occurs on the Pacific coast, breeding in southern Alaska and northern British 

 Columbia, and wintering south to southern California. Here, in winter, it 

 joins company with several other Juncos so similar in looks and habits that it 

 is difficult to distinguish them. The only sure migration records available for 

 this form are of its arrival April 12, 1882, at Portage Bay, Alaska, and April 

 19, 1909, at Kupreanof Island, Alaska. 



Notes on the Plumage of North American Sparrows 



THIRTIETH PAPER 

 By FRANK M. CHAPMAN 



(See Frontispiece) 



Slate-colored Junco {Junco hyemalis hyemalis, Figs. 2-4) . A Junco in 

 nestling or juvenal plumage looks more like a Song Sparrow than its gray-and- 

 white parents. Both above and below it is heavily streaked with blackish, the 

 back feathers being margined with rusty, those of the underparts with buff y or 

 whitish. The two, or more rarely, three, pairs of white, or largely white, outer 

 tail-feathers, however, suggest its relationships, which are fully revealed as 

 it passes through the postjuvenal molt into first winter plumage. At this 

 molt only the tail and wing-feathers are retained; the rest being shed. The 

 young male now resembles the adult female (Fig. 3), but may be somewhat 

 browner, while the young female (Fig. 4) is often decidedly browner, with 

 pinkish brown flanks, when it suggests certain of the pink-sided western Juncos. 



There is no spring molt, and the summer plmnage, with its more sharply 

 contrasted areas of slate-color and white, is the result of the wearing away of 

 the brownish tips of the winter plumage. 



So far as I am aware, this simple order of molt is followed by all Juncos, 

 and it will, therefore, be necessary only to emmierate the remaining North 

 American species and subspecies, giving with each an outline of its range and 

 characters. This, however, cannot be done satisfactorily. The Juncos respond 

 so readily to the influences of their environment, and the ranges of the moun- 

 tain-inhabiting forms are so difficult to determine, that few ornithologists are 

 agreed on the status of the forms of this group. I merely follow, therefore, 

 the arrangement of the 'Check-List' of the American Ornithologists' Union, 



I. White-winged Junco {Junco aikeni, Fig. i). A distinct species, known 

 by its large size and white wing-bars. 



Range. "Central Rocky Mountain region. Breeds in the Bear Lodge 

 Mountains, Wyoming, the Black Hills, South Dakota, and in northwestern 

 Nebraska; winters from the Black Hills to southern Colorado and western 

 Kansas, and casually to Oklahoma and New Mexico," (A. O. U.) 



