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The little black-headed snowbird, Thurber's junco, is the most common of all the Tahoe birds. The thick-billed sparrow, a grayish bird with spotted breast and enormous bill is found on all the brushy hillsides and is noted for its glorious bursts of rich song.
Hairy Woodpecker, 1; Downy Woodpecker, 7; Blue Jay, 8; Goldfinch, 2; Pine Siskin, 1; Tree Sparrow, 75; Slate-coloured Junco, 20; Cardinal, 2; White-breasted Nuthatch, 3; Chickadee, 26. Total, 10 species, 145 individuals. Denver, Colo. Dec. 25; 2.20 to 4 P. M. Partly cloudy; ground with some snow; wind west, strong; temperature 45 degrees to 55 degrees.
Their food consists almost entirely of insects with a very little grass-seed. They search every tree, shrub, and vine for caterpillars, spiders and grasshoppers. Sparrows are almost equally useful. The tree sparrow, song sparrow, chipping sparrow, field sparrow and snowbird or junco are all great weed-seed destroyers.
The songs of the birds, the construction of their nests, and the number of their eggs taper off as the season wanes. The junco impresses me as a fidgety, emphatic, feather-edged sort of bird; the two white quills in its tail which flash out so suddenly on every movement seem to stamp in this impression.
It will be a comfort to learn that the bird really did have a nest just about the place you thought it was located. Many other pleasing surprises await you in the winter woods. The Downy's Winter Quarters. One late autumn day I stopped to watch a Junco feeding among some weed stalks near a hillside trail.
It was the chaffing voice of the Scoutmaster, Malcolm Seaver, which spoke, addressing some twenty scouts who were scattered about the vine-draped entrance to Snowbird Cave, where, yearly, the little gray-white junco birds otherwise snow-birds fluffy balls, with no heads to speak of, wintered among the low hemlocks near the cavern's mouth and fed upon the spicy hemlock bark.
My junco was a little nervous at first and showed her white quills, but she soon grew used to my presence, and would alight upon the chair which I kept for callers, and upon my hammock-ropes. When an artist came to paint my portrait amid such rustic surroundings, the bird only eyed her a little suspiciously at first, and then went forward with her own affairs.
Not till I stooped down and reached forth my hand did the mother bird come fluttering out and go down the road with drooping wings and spread tail, the white quills of the latter fairly lighting up the whole performance. A very shy and artful bird is the junco. I had had brief glimpses of the male many times about the place.
Estuno alli el Patays casi treynta dias, esperando las otras naues, y como no vinieron, determino de boluer a Mexico: y al tiepo que salio dela isla, encontro vn junco, que es navio de casi cient toneladas, enla qual venian sessenta Indios, y como vieron el Patays, todos se echarona nado, y se fueron a la tierra, que estana cerca.
The second nest she completed and occupied and doubtless found her pendent-nest instinct fully satisfied by the high swaying elm branch. One of our prettiest nest-builders is the junco or snowbird; in fact, it builds the prettiest nest to be found upon the ground, I think more massive and finely moulded and finished than that of the song sparrow.
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