The Slate-colored Junco 



Two days later I return and find the mistress absent. Secret hope, 

 I confess, mingles with real solicitude for the absentee, for those eggs 

 are of a particularly handsome tint of pale artemisia green, speckled 

 and irregularly spotted, chiefly about the larger end, with lavender and 

 purple. Who will deliver me from this temptation! Ah, here she comes 

 again, tripping daintily from twig to twig, taking her place and resuming 

 her task as complacently as though there were no strange passions abroad. 

 Again and again she sits patiently while shutters click and plate-holders 

 are flourished. We will have photographs anyhow. If she quits the 

 eggs to stretch now and then, she never leaves the nesting bush, even 

 while I am rearranging the tripod. The male at no time appears, al- 

 though I hear him singing in the distance. He, too, trusts this very capable 

 little person to "manage." 



My little Sage Sparrow was faithful to the last. Time came to 

 break camp, and I could not wait to see the babies hatch. But I went to 

 say goodbye to the mother, and she let me put my face right down within 

 a foot of hers. I was her good giant and she feared me never a whit. A 

 flood of soft talk sprang to my lips. I could not restrain it, penitence, 

 congratulation, and an infinite yearning. Why cannot all of life be like 

 this — sacrifice, fidelity and uprightness! Perhaps one day we shall — 

 understand — each other. 



No. 50 



Slate-colored Junco 



A. O. U. No. 567. Junco hyemalis hyemalis (Linnaeus). 



Synonyms. — Eastern Junco. Snowbird. 



Description. — Adult male in spring: General color slaty black (or dusky 

 neutral gray); middle breast, belly and crissum white, abruptly contrasting with 

 slaty of upper breast (which has a concave outline by reason of the continuation of 

 slaty on sides), shading on sides; wings and tail deeper slaty black; the two outer pairs 

 of rectrices wholly white, the succeeding pair extensively white, or not, centrally on 

 distal portion of inner web. Bill pinkish white, narrowly tipped with dusky; iris dark 

 reddish brown or purplish; legs light brown, feet darker. Adult male in fall and winter: 

 As in spring, but upper parts lightly washed with reddish brown; the sides and some- 

 times the throat lightly veiled with buffy. Immature males are still more heavily 

 veiled, with snuff-brown or light bister above, with buffy below, and with a cloudy 

 buffy suffusion of the under whites. Adult female: Like adult male, but slaty lighter 

 and duller, usually with slight veiling by brownish above and buffy below; the accession 

 by brownish is correspondingly greater in autumn; and immature females are still 

 more extensively brown. Young birds are drab above with blackish streaking, and 



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