Bird names have changed a lot in the 40-plus years I have been birding. For the most part, that is because our ideas about what constitutes a bird species have been changing. The original field guide ...

Dark-eyed Juncos are showing up in my yard and the yards of others, virtually announcing that fall is long gone and winter is here. Famed 18th- and 19th-century naturalists, such as Mark Catesby (1682 ...

Most winters, the dark-eyed junco is one of the most common birds at my feeder. While I rarely see juncos in summer, except when hiking in the mountains, small flocks of juncos typically appear soon ...

Bird-feeding means a lot more than just feeding birds. Providing food invites birds to share your living space. Paying attention to them makes that sharing much more than just a chore to keep the ...

It’s hard not to like juncos. These members of the Emberizidae (sparrow) family have handsome, boldly patterned plumage. They make a soft, pleasant flight call that sounds much like glass tinkling.

Since retiring from Quarry Hill, unquestionably the bird I caught most often would be the American goldfinch. This was probably for a couple reasons. One is that Whitewater Park, where I have done ...

Chickadees might be popular as tiny birds of Christmas, but the dark-eyed junco is winter's ground soldier. Flocks of juncos, which usually nest and rear their young in conifer forests, move into ...

GRAND FORKS – The dark-eyed junco is another of the signature birds of October. They may be more abundant than last week’s bird, the Canada goose – and perhaps as abundant as the snow goose, which ...

Human snow birds, my friends from Lake Villa included, are off to Florida, but avian snow birds are right here in northern Illinois. They’ll be with us until at least early April, if not longer. They ...

The best field mark for the junco, the bird books say, is the sharp division between gray plumage forward and above and white below and to the rear. This is indeed an excellent field mark. Definitive, ...

I suspect the great naturalist and pioneer ornithologist was optimistic in his estimation of junco familiarity. His “snow-bird” is now formally known as the dark-eyed junco, and back in Audubon’s time ...