northeast-flora-and-fauna

A tiny branch to you and me is a very functional platform for a Song Sparrow . In my area the Song Sparrow is the prototypical sparrow: Learn what they look like and you'll recognize (with the possible exception of the Dark-eyed Junco [1]) the most abundant species of one of our most abundant bird families: New World Sparrows . Use the differences between Song Sparrows and other sparrows as a way to learn to ID the other sparrows. (I'm still not great at this myself.) Though Song Sparrows know more than 1 song (up to 20 actually), they don't switch between their songs very often. You'll frequently hear 1 singing basically the same song over and over, but hours later might be singing a different tune. Like jazz musicians though, they'll frequently add some improvisation to their basic songs. May 9, 2023 at Duke Farms Photo 282306455, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC) May 9, 2023 at Duke Farms Photo 282306468, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC B...

Though I think I've heard them recently, I haven't seen Dark-eyed Juncos recently. If they're still down here, they're no doubt planning their northward migration to their breeding grounds. Since we probably won't see these guys for a while, let's admire these little dudes through pictures. I think their manners are a little better when they forage in the wild than they do when I've fed them at my patio . On my patio there are lots of attempts to intimidate one another while feeding, but on a trail where food is far less plentiful they seem to all be pecking around the area without conflict. I suspect that when foraging in the wild any food they find just gets immediately eaten, leaving nothing to fight over. I called them a ubiquity of Dark-eyed Juncos. Though this webpage doesn't address a group of juncos directly, they do suggest "ubiquity", "host", "quarrel", and "tribe" as collective names for sparrows . Sin...

Here are a couple of birds who stopped by my patio for Christmas dinner. Though I can't guarantee that any other birds showed up, by far the most common visitors were Dark-eyed Juncos and House Sparrows . Though both of these birds are sparrows, they're really not close relatives since the former are New World Sparrows and the latter are Old World Sparrows , and their ancestries diverged a long time ago. Although House Sparrows aren't big, they really do tower over the Dark-eyed Juncos. I didn't see a lot of interaction between the 2 species but suspect that the juncos like to keep a respectful distance from their distant cousins. I do see some feisty exchanges between juncos though as they establish a pecking order. (I tried to go out and explain that there was no reason to fight, that I'd just bring out more food when the current scatterings were gone, but unfortunately they flew away in terror before I could say anything.) December 25, 2022 in Bridgewater Photo...

Here are a couple Dark-eyed Juncos from last autumn. They were the 1st ones I got pictures of last season, but they're typically around earlier than November; the previous year I got pictures of them in early October. Though they breed further north from NJ, they spend a lot of time down here to escape the harsher northern winters. I've gotten pictures of them between October and April, so despite them not breeding here they can be spotted here over half the year. (I don't know if individual juncos are here for 7 months; I suspect I'm seeing a mix of early and late migrators during these months.) Almost all our sparrows have "sparrow" in their common names; juncos, towhees, and buntings [1] are the main exceptions. November 16, 2022 at Duke Farms Photo 251084869, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC) [1] Buntings a slightly complicated. Some of them are classified as sparrows while others are classified as cardinals.

For today's Throwback Thursday, let's talk about the  White-throated Sparrow . These sparrows breed as nearby as New York but spend winters in New Jersey on south.  Although Dark-eyed Juncos have the "snowbird" nickname, White-throated Sparrows are also commonly seen winter visitors in my area. The Cornell Lab of Ornithology says they'll sometimes breed successfully with their Dark-eyed Junco coworkers despite not being closely related. (These kinds of remarks make me wonder how well we really know how closely related our sparrows are.) The love lives of White-throated Sparrows have an interesting complication. They come in 2 morphs, 1 with a white stripe on their heads and 1 with a tan stripe there. These morphs are independent of sex; both males and females can be either the white-stripe morph or the tan-stripe morph. (All adults should have white throats.) Here's where it gets complicated. Males of both morphs are attracted to white-stripe morph females, a...

I know I showed a Dark-eyed Junco fairly recently, but this picture came out pretty good so you're getting another one. Since I did discuss them recently , I'll talk about the picture instead. In most pictures male Dark-eyed Juncos will look more like a pure gray, but this one has almost a slightly bluish look to it. I'm not sure why this is. It's possible that when I processed the photo - I take pictures in "raw" mode and then use software to create JPGs or PNGs - I accidentally changed the color, but I think it's more likely that this is a case when you can get somewhat nonstandard coloring in certain lighting. When you're trying to ID birds, flowers, insects, you probably shouldn't fixate on finding a color match since sometimes the color can look a little off. Paying attention to the shape and patterns is probably more important for many identifications. Location and season are often very important too. October 21, 2021 at Duke Farms Photo 168...

Here's a sparrow that I didn't see much of this winter but is in New Jersey all year round: the Song Sparrow . (This picture was from last autumn.) Though this little fella was probably between songs, it's not unusual to hear them out there singing . Similar to yesterday's Dark-eyed Junco , these are very numerous and very widespread sparrows. They don't go quite as far into Canada/Alaska as the juncos, but they can be found in all lower 48 states and approximately the southern half of Canada. They're also known for their regional variations, though I wouldn't consider the variations to be as evident as with the Dark-eyed Juncos. Similar to the Dark-eyed Junco, the Song Sparrow is a pretty small bird. Both of them are under an ounce in weight; you need to describe them in grams if you want to avoid fractions. (The Song Sparrow is listed in my field guide as 20 grams, just slightly bigger than the Dark-eyed Junco at 19 grams. I'm sure this means that alth...

While people have long considered the American Robin a harbinger of spring, there's some justification in considering the Dark-eyed Junco as a harbinger of winter (though perhaps identifying them as such would adversely affect their popularity). This was almost certainly one of the 1st juncos I saw last autumn. (The Cornell Lab of Ornithology implies that juncos are here all year round, though I've never actually seen one in the summer.) This species is a little like the Red-tailed Hawk in that different subspecies across the continent have quite different plumage, probably making early ornithologists think they were different species. In our area, we generally have the "slate-colored junco", the subspecies that's got a whitish belly and is gray (males) or grayish-brown (females) above. Another thing they have in common with Red-tailed Hawks is that red-tails are among our most common raptors, and the Dark-eyed Junco is one of our most common birds overall. The...

While yesterday's Mourning Dove are rare beneficiaries of the bird food I've left out for the Dark-eyed Juncos , much more frequent beneficiaries are the House Sparrows . As one of the most successful invasive bird species in North America (the European Starling is the other one), House Sparrows are less popular with birders, naturalists, and ecologists than almost any bird we see. This actually extends to the law; while harming most birds is illegal (with some regulated exceptions for game birds), these guys aren't protected by federal law. (Local animal cruelty laws could still apply though.) These guys are Old World sparrows , and are thus not particularly closely related to virtually all the other sparrows you see; almost all the other sparrows you see are New World sparrows . (New World sparrows are actually more closely related to Old World Buntings than Old World Sparrows. Such is the confusing world of taxonomy.) March 2021 at Finderne

For the past couple (few?) winters I've been scattering food on the ground to feed the Dark-eyed Juncos that winter near me. This year a couple other birds have taken notice; here's a Mourning Dove that dropped by for a bite to eat. I'm a little surprised 1) That I haven't seen these birds come by before, and 2) That even now that they've discovered the food source, they still don't come by all that often. Certainly Mourning Doves are plentiful in the area, and they are happy to feed off the ground. One thing you will notice if they're out there with the Dark-eyed Juncos is that while we think of both of these as "little birds", the Mourning Dove is a much larger bird. While most of the birds we see around are passerines (e.g. crows/jays, robins, sparrows, warblers), the doves/pigeons are not. They are columbids , and are more distantly related to most of the bird feeder birds. March 2021 at Finderne