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.
Very different from our slate variety of junco
In Quebec, we have been getting a ton of this type this year
I am not sure why but I swear birds rotate. These Juncos were not particularly common around my home but this year we got a million, they hit the bird feeders hard and now they are almost all gone.
In years past we had tons of Blue Jays, then Cardinals, now Juncos
The only breed that seems constant year after year are the Chickadees like this one
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.
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.
Adorable, great pics too!
Phoebe with head redacted.
Ah! I love juncos! Every time I hear them, I grab my app and act surprised when that cool bird song sound is yet again a dark eyed junco.
(Merlin)
![Oregon Dark-Eyed Junco In The Snow... I Think [OC]](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/a764f8c3-e46a-422f-b07a-bf387463723a.jpeg){kind=link}