Dark-eyed Junco
Juncos
One of the birds I love seeing around our place is the little black and white Junco, technically the Dark-eyed Junco, but I just call them Juncos.
Like the Chickadees we also have, the Juncos are small friendly birds that flit about just on the edge of our lawn and go between the feeders and the woods. Many years we don’t see Juncos much, but this year we seem to have them in numbers – there were a half dozen on our South feeder yesterday!
Juncos are migratory, but many are here year around. We tend to see them here in the yard more frequently in winter, and so some folks call them “snowbirds” as they tend to show up in early December, staying until early Spring and then disappearing, or actually doing short migrations or going to nest in the deeper woods.
I have a platform feeder which I put chicken scratch and millet on – the latter being a favourite Junco food. It’s a lot of fun to have these active birds about, they’re well worth observing and getting to know.
