Juncos are the best

I loudly declare that my favorite bird is the Oregon Dark-eyed Junco - pretty much all the time.

These little sparrows have been my favorite for a few years now, and I’m sure it is mostly because they are in my yard year round and raise their young right in front of my eyes. Sometimes, familiarity breeds, um, the opposite of contempt.

I’m not a big fan of the name, Junco, though, and there is no satisfying origin story to make it better. le sigh

Unlike the nuthatches and chickadees, who must place their order ahead of time, only stopping at the seed trays to grab something and run, the juncos like to take their time and dine in. A junco will sit on a feed and nibble away, seed by seed or worm by worm. Admittedly, song sparrows and spotted towhees exhibit the same habit. Those birds are much more aggressive than the juncos, though. Juncos are a little timid sparrow - quick to fly off and give space to almost anything.

I tried to use internet resources to learn more about juncos, or sparrows even, but I made to page 20 on google without learning anything new. Every site is like, “a junco is a sparrow…a sparrow is blah blah” but without actually explaining anything about why sparrows are grouped together or anything besides superficial appearance that separates juncos from other sparrows. Annoying, actually, because I now foresee a bit of a deep ornithogical dive for me, and I’m not really ready for that.

What I am ready for is watching the juncos. They will hop all over the yard or stand still eating a bit of seed. They will call to each other. They make small nests in flower pots and tend to each other and their young. The fledgling juncos will hop around with a parent and demand food, quite obnoxiously, looking like a super floofy version of their future selves. The parents are very protective of their charges. I could watch them all day, but alas, sometimes they all fly away, and I get to do other things.

note to self: Today, you discovered that the wikipedia article on juncos sites no source material. You really want to fix that. Hold off for now; you are not a bird expert.