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The nuthatches, titmice, woodpeckers, and brown creepers find larvae, grubs, borers, and insects' eggs in the crannies of the bark and other nooks and niches; the goldfinches find something to their taste in the buds of the trees and also make many a meal of thistle and sunflower seeds; the juncos and tree sparrows, forming a joint stock company in winter, rifle all kinds of weeds of their seedy treasures; the blue jays lunch on acorns and berries when they cannot find enough juicy grubs to satisfy their appetites, and so on through the whole list.
In the calm brightness of winter sunshine, filling sheltered copses with warmth and cheer, you will watch the lingering blue-birds and robins and song-sparrows playing at summer, while the chickadees and the juncos and the cross-bills make merry in the windswept fields.
Nor, lovely as they are to my eye, will they be less beautiful to the winter chippies, the goldfinches, juncos and a host of other seed-eating birds who will find them bountifully spread for their delectation all the winter through. On rainy days I like to bring these brawn stems into camp and, setting them by the glow of the open fire, see them bloom as they dry out.
One evening we notice the juncos and tree sparrows in the tangled, frost-burned stubble, and the next day, although our eye catches glints of white from sparrow tails, it is from vesper finches, not from juncos, and the weed spray which a few hours before bent beneath a white-throat's weight, now vibrates with the energy which a field sparrow puts into his song.
All the winter birds are doing their share in the chorus and orchestra; crows, jays, woodpeckers, nut-hatches, juncos, tree-sparrows. But suddenly a woodpecker begins a new sound, his vernal drumming! Not the mere tap, tap, tap, in quest of insects, but the love-call drumming of the nidification season, nearly three months ahead of time.
They are quite like the juncos, to me, these genial men of the frozen day. They suddenly appear from I know not where, share the joys of the day and place for a brief time, then walk off the ice again with their traps, going I know not whither.
What foes may be lurking in the growing darkness they know not. A favorite roosting place for the sparrows, towhees, juncos, and even the robins, was in some thickets by the roadside. As I passed along, a bird would occasionally leap from his perch to the ground and go galloping away over the rustling leaves.
At the same moment, or perhaps a moment later it all occurred so quickly I could not be exact a covey of juncos hurled themselves with reckless swiftness into the brush pile, followed by a sparrow hawk, which uttered a queer, uncanny call that meant death to any little bird that should be overtaken.
No! no! a toper Master Junco is not; he is too sane a bird for that! Would that all the citizens of our republic would display as much sound judgment and self-control. Where all the birds sleep on biting winter nights it would be difficult to say, but the acute little juncos lease the farmer's corn shocks hard by the woods. At dusk you may startle a dozen of them from a single shock.
The nest is tucked far under the mossy and weedy bank, and only a nest-hunter passing along the road, with "eye practiced like a blind man's touch" and with juncos in mind, would have seen it. A little screen of leaves of the hawkweed permits only the rim of one edge of the nest to be seen.
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