United States or Haiti ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The nearer the spring approached, the higher they mounted in the trees, and the more prolonged was their flight, as if they were practicing their wing exercises to inure their muscles to the strain that would be put upon them when they undertook their long journey to their northern summer homes; for, of course, the juncos do not breed in our central latitudes, but hie to the northern part of the United States and the Dominion of Canada.
M.F. Juncos believes that the prisons were in the lower part of the Dominican Convent, later the territorial audience and now the supreme court, but Mr. Salvador Brau thinks that they occupied a plot of ground in the angle formed by Cristo Street and the "Caleta" of San Juan.
But you may depend upon it he is not alone; he is only a part of the rim of a feathered colony dwelling near at hand, and consisting, very likely, of tufted titmice, white-breasted nuthatches, juncos, tree sparrows, blue jays, one or two downy woodpeckers, a pair of cardinals, a flicker or two, and a cackling red-breasted woodpecker.
"Why, there are some birds, and they're not sparrows, either!" said Daisy Gravers, indicating several slate-colored birds about the size of English sparrows. "I didn't know there were any other winter birds around here!" "They are Juncos, or Snowbirds," explained the Captain. "They are a winter bird with us, and as soon as the warm weather comes they will fly north.
The sharp chirps of juncos are heard before the ice begins to form, and they stay with us all winter. We have called the junco a snowbird, but this name should really be confined to a black and white bunting which comes south only with a mid-winter's rush of snowflakes.
No fruit-bearing trees were there to invite the birds in summer; nor, so far as I could see, any berry-bearing shrubs such as birds enjoy, nor any weed patches to attract the flocks of Whitethroats and Juncos that come drifting southward with the falling leaves of autumn. Had my visit to this place been made late in April, or in May, there might have been a different tale to tell.
The founder of the magazine was Don Manuel Juncos, who is the author of several books of travel. He speaks of the Brooklyn bridge as "a magic vision of the Thousand and One Nights," while the smoke that rose from myriads of New York chimneys "formed the holy and blessed incense of a mighty and busy population, rising directly up to God from the fecund altar of labor."
The beautiful tree-sparrows and the pine-siskins are more melodious, and the slate-coloured juncos, flitting about the camp, are as garrulous as chippy-birds. All these varied notes come and go through the tangle of morning dreams.
In the afternoon of this day they saw abundance of weeds lying in length north and south, and three alcatrazes pursued by a rabo de junco. On the morning of Sunday the thirtieth of September four rabo de juncos came to the ship; and from so many of them coming together it was thought the land could not be far distant, especially as four alcatrazes followed soon afterwards.
In the latter part of February the juncos began to rehearse their spring songs, which were a welcome sound in the almost unbroken silence of the winter.
Word Of The Day