The Garden Club of Indiana

On the Wing

Jill Dinsmore

January and Junco's

Many of you will be as fortunate as I am to have a feeder right outside your kitchen window and a nice pedestal bird bath with a heater in it ;close to it.

I always think when I see a Junco that winter has begun.

This slate gray bird blends easily with the gray skies and snow covered ground; hence the popular name “snowbird”. It is easily recognized by it’s gray and white plumage across it’s head and back, dark eyes, white belly, pink beak and the outermost tail feathers as a white V in flight .

This bird migrates from Canada and Alaska to Indiana and farther south, depending on the snow cover, rarely as far as Florida.

Found in flocks of 16 or more, they are ground feeders enjoying cracked corn, millet, sunflower seed in the winter & during the summer will eat ants, spiders caterpillars as well as weeds & grass seeds – watch them & you will notice them double scratching the ground with both feet.

The common breeding place is in the Adirondacks & Canada & zones with an abundance of pines & spruce, but it is the only species known to nest on the summit of Mt Washington in the White Mountains, the highest mountain in the northeast.

Both male & female will build a nest in the ground under slopes, next to a stone, a bunch of weeds or under a small shrub, where it will be well concealed.

Made of grasses, mosses, rootlets & hair, they lay 4-5 oval eggs, glossy pale blue with reddish brown markings. Incubation takes 12-13 days & fledglings leave in 10-13 days, so 2 broods can be hatched each season &a new nest is required for each one. As spring arrives we rarely notice these friendly birds have disappeared.