One of our most common birds here in the San Bernardino Mountains is a small member of the sparrow family called the dark-eyed junco (Junco hyemalis). Although they are winter visitors to some parts of the US, these birds are with us year round. Juncos frequently visit the ground under feeders, where they typically forage for millet seeds that have been spilled by pickier birds from above.
I like having juncos come to my feeder, because they clean up the mess left on the deck when chickadees and nuthatches knock seeds out of the feeder that they apparently don’t consider edible. The juncos come in and consume these seeds, eliminating the need to constantly sweep up after the sloppy eaters. I’ve even come to recognize one of our regular visiting juncos because he is missing a foot. He hops around without any noticeable difficulty, but does seem to lean a bit to one side when he stops hoping. I’ve nicknamed him “Lefty.”
If you are a birder, or even a causal backyard observer, you might rightly question the title of this article. Confusing? This species, with its dark head, pink bill, white underside, and white outer tail feathers, is easily recognized.
Then what’s so confusing about these birds?
Well, let’s start with the name. Junco is a Spanish word meaning “rush” or “reed,” a kind of wetland grass-like plant. Juncos are ground dwellers, but they don’t like wetlands and would not ever be found in a habitat where rushes grow. So how did they get a name that comes from the Spanish word for a plant they have nothing to do with?
In 1758, Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus, the father of modern taxonomy, first assigned the name Fringilla hyemalis (which translates from Latin as “winter finch”). Its current name, the genus “Junco,” was created in 1831 by the German naturalist Johann Georg Wagler when he examined a specimen of the closely related yellow-eyed junco. However, Wagler did his work in Europe, not America, so he relied on descriptions of other European birds as a reference. He was likely familiar with a European bird called the reed sparrow, which was listed in the Oxford English Dictionary at the time with the name “junco.” Wagler, had never even seen a live junco, and had no idea it was not associated with wetland habitats the way the reed sparrow was. Based on what he knew at the time, he probably established “Junco” as the genus name because of that bird’s similarity to the reed sparrow. Sometime in the late 1800s, it was recognized that Linnaeus had incorrectly assumed Fringilla hyemalis was a finch, when it was actually a sparrow and it was placed in the genus Junco, along with the yellow-eyed junco.
I’ll briefly delve into the other confusing thing about juncos. When I first started birdwatching back on the east coast, the juncos I grew up with had a dark grey back and were called slate-colored juncos. The field guide I had listed another species with a tan back and sides called the Oregon junco. In fact, there were five different species of juncos back then. But it turns out the slate-colored juncos I was watching back east and the Oregon juncos of the west (along with the pink-sided junco of the northern Rockies, the grey-headed junco of central Rockies, and the white-winged junco of South Dakota) are all just regional variations of the same species. In the 1970s, all five were “lumped” into a single species… the dark-eyed junco. The regional variants are now treated as sub-species.
No matter what you call them, these gregarious little birds can brighten up even the dreariest winter morning and I hope you enjoy seeing them as much as I do.
A note about conservation
While juncos are one of the most numerous birds in North America, there are concerns about this species' future. Over the past few decades, its population has decreased by 40 percent. Juncos are particularly sensitive to habitat loss, which is driving their numbers down. They are also frequently the victims of window collisions. You can help by applying vinyl stickers to large windows in your home to decrease the likelihood of bird strikes. Most people use stickers shaped like birds of prey, but there are many options. Here's a link with a variety of attractive shapes available: https://windowalert.com/
Comments