I should have brought snow shoes for some parts of this.

The ground state of being for Dark-Eyed Juncos, or Juncos in particular, is being annoying to precisely identify. This appears to be the Oregon variant, which may or may not be a subspecies of Junco hyemalis, or merely asking the question might start a brawl at the ornithologist’s conference.

I tried to use my R10’s inbuilt subject tracking feature here since this one kept hopping around all over the place, and every time I do I desperately believe that this time the result won’t be crap. Because hope springs eternal, I suppose. I’m usually wrong. You’d think I’d have learned my lesson by now.

  • Tempus Fugit@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    3 months ago

    For sure. I can always count on the chickadees to be there in the dead of winter. I couldn’t find any juncos this winter.

    • dual_sport_dork 🐧🗡️@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      2·
      3 months ago

      We had the slate colored ones all over the place during the winter snows. Now there seem to be a lot fewer of them but they’re definitely still around. I don’t recall seeing any of the slates around here in years prior.

      Birds migrate to where the food is. I wonder if some of their ranges are starting to shift or at least become displaced to a different part of the season due to climate change. It certainly wouldn’t surprise me.

      On a possibly related note, the Japanese maple in our front yard didn’t drop its leaves at all last winter. I’ve never seen that happen before.