Dusky, Gray, and Slate-colored 
‘°° Nay, Bird; my griet gainsays the Lord’s best right. 
The Lord was fain, at some late festal time, 
That Keats should set all heaven’s woods in rhyme, 
And Thou in bird-notes. Lo, this tearful night 
Methinks I see thee, fresh from Death’s despite, 
Perched in a palm-grove, wild with pantomime 
O’er blissful companies couched in shady thyme. 
Methinks I hear thy silver whistlings bright 
Meet with the mighty discourse of the wise,— 
Till broad Beethoven, deaf no more, and Keats, 
’Midst of much talk, uplift their smiling eyes 
And mark the music of thy wood-conceits, 
And half-way pause on some large courteous word, 
And call thee ‘ Brother,’ O thou heavenly Bird !” 
Junco 
(Junco hyemalis) Finch family 
Called also: SNOWBIRD ; SLATE-COLORED SNOWBIRD 
Length—5.5 to 6.5 inches. About the size of the English sparrow. 
Male—Upper parts slate-colored; darkest on head and neck, which 
are sometimes almost black and marked like a cowl. Gray 
on breast, like a vest. Underneath white. Several outer tail 
feathers white, conspicuous in flight. 
Female—Lighter gray, inclining to brown. 
Range—North America. Not common in warm latitudes. Breeds 
in the Catskills and northern New England. 
Migrations—September. April. Winter resident. 
“‘Leaden skies above; snow below,” is Mr. Parkhurst’s sug- 
gestive description of this rather timid little neighbor, that is only 
starved into familiarity. When the snow has buried seed and 
berries, a flock of juncos, mingling sociably with the sparrows 
and chickadees about the kitchen door, will pick up scraps of 
food with an intimacy quite touching in a bird naturally rather 
shy. Here we can readily distinguish these ‘‘little gray-robed 
monks and nuns,” as Miss Florence Merriam calls them. 
They are trim, sprightly, sleek, and even natty; their disposi- 
tions are genial and vivacious, not quarrelsome, like their sparrow 
cousins, and what is perhaps best about them, they are birds we 
may surely depend upon seeing in the winter months. A few 
come forth in September, migrating at night from the deep 
83 
