Juncos and White-Throats

     For a couple of hours on the afternoon of November 9, 2017, I went to a landfill area just outside Morgantown, Pennsylvania to look for small birds in thickets.  While driving slowly back a gravel lane along a woodland edge, I saw hundreds of ring-billed gulls wheeling together overhead, flocks of starlings perched on tall, wire fences that enclosed the landfill, a few American crows in trees and several turkey vultures soaring on high and over the landfill.  Suddenly, I saw several little birds fly off the gravel road ahead of me and into the bordering woods.  Those small birds probably were eating tiny stones to help grind the seeds in their stomachs.  I stopped, scanned the birds with 16 power binoculars and saw they were dark-eyed juncos.  As they left the road, I estimated there were about 50 of them, but I only saw a few in the woods.  Most of the juncos ducked out of sight and  were camouflaged against tree trunks and fallen leaves on the woodland floor.  Juncos are as gray as a November sky on top, but their bellies are as white as snow.
     For a short time I watched for the juncos to come out of hiding, but none of them did.  I turned the car around and slowly drove out the way I came in.  About halfway down the gravel lane, I saw about 12 white-throated sparrows in a weedy thicket.  They were busily eating seeds off the tops of tall weeds and grasses.  But being brown and dark-streaked, they were not easy to see among the dead weeds and grasses.  And, as their name implies, each handsome sparrow that I did see through binoculars had a white throat patch.    
     Just before I got to the blacktop road, I saw another flock of small birds on the gravel, probably ingesting bits of stones.  When I looked at them through field glasses, I noticed they were a group of about 100 juncos.  Unfortunately for the birds and me, I car whizzed by on the blacktop and the juncos flew into a stand of red junipers and nearby woods.  
     The eastern race of dark-eyed juncos and I go back a long way to my childhood.  The first ones I saw were about a dozen of them wintering in our garden outside Rohrerstown, Pennsylvania.  They were feeding on weed seeds in that garden, but flew away when I accidentally approached them, the two white, outer tail feathers of each bird creating an up-side-down V as they hastened from me.
     I also saw wintering juncos in some stands of planted, fragrant coniferous trees that happened to be near patches of tall weeds and grasses.  As I approached the evergreens, I would see juncos disappearing among needled boughs, chipping excitedly as they went and flashing their white V's.  Their chipping and lively activities made those clumps of conifers come alive during winter.
     I first saw little groups of wintering white-throats in thickets along woodland edges when I was a young adult.  And I see them on older lawns with many tall trees and shrubbery.  The heads of male white-throats are quite striking with black and white striping on their crowns and a yellow spot between the beak and each eye.  And each male has a vividly-white throat.
     Male white-throats sing beautifully in winter, mostly at dusk.  Each one perches in a thicket and whistles a long note, then another long note on a higher pitch, followed by four short ones on the same pitch as the second note.  A few male white-throats singing pleasantly together in a thicket make a cold, winter twilight more bearable.  Their songs are appealing and heart-warming.
     Juncos and white-throats have some traits in common.  Neither of these handsome, abundant sparrow species nest in southeastern Pennsylvania, but farther north and west, and down the Appalachian Mountains in the case of the juncos.  Both eat weed and grass seeds in winter.  Both kinds also winter on lawns and regularly come to bird feeders, including in our yard.  
     Wintering dark-eyed juncos and white-throated sparrows add much beauty and interest to thickets, stands of evergreens and lawns in southeastern Pennsylvania,  as elsewhere.  They help brighten many a cold, dreary winter's day with their lively activities.