The Big Yard: Birdwatching in a Time of Quarantine

Or: The Evolution of a Pajama Lister

The Yellow-eyed Junco is a year-round resident in my yard. Southeast Arizona is the northernmost extension of its range.

Day 216 of the Quarantine (October 17, 2020)

            After the sun sinks into the Mule Mountains, I sit in the yard watching juncos at the fountain.  “Junco” is Latin for “reeds” or “rushes,” the marsh plant with tall bent stems shooting out of my pond that the birds ascend and descend like angels on Jacob’s Ladder. 

I check off a couple yellow-eyed, but I’m also looking for the various races of dark-eyed.  Most are the pink-billed “gray-headed” with clearly defined rufous mantles and black lores—that small space between the eyes and beak. They flit about the trickling water, white tail feathers flaring.  Occasionally, a few “pink-sided” and maybe an “Oregon” with a black hood will join the fray, and the rare “red-backed,” but what I’m hoping for is a fifth race, a junco the color of slate.  Finding Birds in Southeast Arizona lists them as “a rare winter resident.” I’ve read a few reports of them in the county—one birder mentioned how it was the first he’d ever seen in his yard.  I’ve never identified one among all the kinds of juncos that hop mouselike around my yard pecking at seeds during the winter months. 

            In 1831, John James Audubon said of the junco: “There is not an individual in the Union who does not know the little Snow-bird.” He painted a couple of the races, pairs stiffly posed on the branches of a dogwood tree as if his subjects were actually alive and not shot, stuffed, and arranged with wires, thread, and pins.  (“Their flesh is extremely delicate and juicy,” he noted.)  The watercolor he titled “Snow Bird” is the slate-colored form “perched” on the fruiting twigs of a tupelo tree.

The “Gray-headed” form of the Dark-eyed Junco is the most common winter resident in my yard.

The “Pink-sided” form spends summers in Montana and Wyoming.

A regular year-round resident of the Pacific Northwest, the “Oregon” form with its dark hood.

The bi-colored bill identifies this junco as the “Red-backed” form, a common resident of central Arizona and New Mexico.

As gloaming comes and the juncos blend into the sky, one of the feral kitties climbs over the fence and trots over to me.  He has a bird, which he drops to the grass in front of me.

“Bandit!” I say, reaching for one of my granddaughter’s pink shoes, “I said cowbirds only!”

But he only slow-blinks at me.

I lift the still-warm bird.  A junco, I immediately recognize, by its gray form and the one remaining white outer tail feather.  It has a white belly and no rufous mantle, the dark gray—slate gray—showing little contrast between the head and body. A slate-colored junco.

The missing snowbird. 

I look at the cat.  The cat looks at me.

John James Audubon had his shotgun.

The “Slate-colored” form of the Dark-eyed Junco. “Delicate and juicy,” both Audubon and Bandit agree.

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