Encounters With Juncos

     When I was about nine years old, I was walking in the family garden in farmland outside Rohrerstown, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, one late afternoon in January.  Snow was on the ground and weeds stood tall above it.  Suddenly, a dozen small, gray birds fluttered up from those weeds and away on the wind.  I remember seeing white V's on their tails as they flew.  I never saw birds like that before and learned later they were an eastern North American form of dark-eyed juncos.  And I learned they were eating seeds off the weeds they were among.   
     Sometime later, again in winter with snow on the ground and the trees, I was walking through an evergreen-scented, two-acre stand of planted, half-grown white pines and Norway spruces when I accidentally chased up several juncos from weeds between the trees.  Each bird quickly bounded into the needled-bearing coniferous boughs to escape, to them, a possible "predator", me.  Each startled junco uttered a series of alarmed, rapid chips as it disappeared into the shadowy limbs of the evergreens.  The last thing I saw of each bird was the white V from the outer feathers, one on each side, of its tail.  Then all of them were out of sight.  I walked on through the conifer woods, hearing the juncos chipping excitedly as I went and thinking that the sudden disappearance of those white tail feathers might confuse predators that were chasing the juncos and suddenly saw nothing to follow.  
     My family moved when I was fifteen to a suburban area outside Lancaster City.  One winter afternoon I walked through a planted, conifer-smelling, one acre patch of young white pines and Norway spruces and again, inadvertently, chased several dark-eyed juncos from a clump of tall, seedy grasses where they were feeding on seeds.  Away those juncos went, into the evergreens, flashing their white V's and chipping all the while.
     Dark-eyed juncos only winter in Lancaster County, and across much of the United States.  They raise young in mixed deciduous/coniferous forest across Canada and Alaska and down the Appalachian and Rocky Mountains of North America.  The eastern form of this species is dapper-looking, being slate-gray on top with white bellies, which resembles gray, winter skies and snow on the ground.  The juncos' constant flicking of the white V's on their tails could be a communication among them.
     Juncos consume seeds in winter, and many of them come to bird feeders during that harshest of seasons.  The main predators on these little birds are sharp-shinned hawks, Cooper's hawks and house cats, particularly when juncos and other kinds of small birds are congregated at feeders.
     Dark-eyed juncos are delightful little birds that entertain and inspire us at bird feeders on our lawns during winter.  And they are often found among adjacent patches of weeds and grasses, and planted coniferous trees where they ingest seeds, and rest between feeding forays.