BY THE WAYSIDE 
SCHOOL BRANCH DEPARTMENT 
Every Wisconsin School Branch is requfred to subscribe for at least one copy of BY THE WAYSIDE 
Letters for this department should be written on only 
one side of the pag;e, should the name, ag-e and ad¬ 
dress of the writer, and should be mailed b.v the first of 
the month; Illinois children sending to Miss Juliet 
Goodrich, 10 Astor St,, Chicago, Ill., and Wisconsin 
children to Miss Edna Edwards, Appleton, Wis. An 
honor badge will be awarded for each state every month 
preference being given to letters about the bird study 
for the month (which is always on this page) and to or¬ 
iginal observations. Any child who wins the honor 
badge twice will receive By The Wayside one year as a. 
prize. 
The wren button, which is the badge of the Audubon 
Society, costs two cents, and may be bought from Miss 
Goodrich or Miss Edwards. 
Any Wisconsin School Branch may, without expense, 
have the use of the Gordon and Merrill Libraries of bird 
books, by applying to Miss Sophia Schaefer, Librarian, 
679 North St., Appleton. 
A set of colored bird glides with a typewriter lecture 
may be rented from Prof. W. S. Marshall, 114 E. Gorham 
Street, Madison, Wis. 
Illinois Schools, may use, without expense, a library 
or a lecture with lantern slides, by applying to Mrs. 
Ruthven Deane, 504 N. State St., Chicago. 
Junco. 
Length —6? inches, about the size of 
English Sparrow. 
Male—Upper parts dark slate gray; 
gray on breast sharply marked off from 
white belly; bill flesh-color; two pairs of out 
or tail feathers white. 
Female —Similar, but washed with 
brownish. 
Range —North America. Not common 
in warm latitudes. 
Migrations—September; April. Win¬ 
ter resident. 
“Leaden skies above; snow below,” is 
Mr. Parkhurst’s suggestive description of 
this rather timid little neighbor, that is 
only starved into familiarty. When the 
snow has buried seed and berries, a flock 
of juncos, mingling sociably with the 
sparrows and chickadees about the kit¬ 
chen 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 dispositions are genial 
and vivacious, not quarrelsome, like their 
sparrow cousins, and what is perhaps 
best about them, they are birds you may 
surely depend upon seeing in the winter 
months. A few come forth in Septem¬ 
ber migrating at night from the deep 
woods of the north, w T here they have 
nested and moulted during the summer; 
but not until frost has sharpened the air 
are large numbers of them seen. 
Early in the spring their song is some¬ 
times heard before they leave us to woo 
and nest in the north. Mr. Bicknell de¬ 
scribes it as “a crisp call note, a simple 
trill and a faint, whispered warble, usu¬ 
ally much broken, but not without sweet¬ 
ness.—Neltje Blanchan in Bird Neighbors. 
“The Junco,” Mr. Chapman says in 
Bird Life , “is one of the birds whose 
acquaintance can be easily made. His 
suit of slaty gray, with its low-cut vest of 
white, is not w T orn by any other of our 
birds; and while some species show- white 
outer tail-feathers in flight, the Junco’s 
seem to be more than usually conspicuous. 
Except when nesting, Juncos associate 
in loose flocks of from ten to fiftv. Gen- 
J 
erally you will find them feeding on the 
ground near evergreens, into which, when 
disturbed, they fly with a twittering note. 
If they are excited by your appearance 
you will hear a sharp, kissing call. 
Mrs. Baily tells us that “Juncos are 
foresters or mountaineers who are driven 
down from the mountains into the mild 
vallevs when the severe snows come.” 
j 
This is written particularly of the West 
but our Juncos, too, are driven down by 
the snows from the forests of the great 
North. 
