Dark-eyed Junco

Junco hyemalis · New World Sparrows (Passerellidae)

1 — At your feeder tomorrow.

Status

Breeds in the mountains and North Country; floods the whole state as a winter feeder bird

Length

5.5–6.3 in

Regions

Coast · Merrimack · Lakes · The Whites · Conn. River

What you notice first

Under the feeder after the first hard frost — a slate-grey sparrow with a clean white belly that flashes white outer tail feathers every time it flushes.

Voice

A dry, musical trill on one pitch, like a slower Chipping Sparrow, sung from the mountains in summer; sharp "tick" notes and a soft twittering from winter flocks.

Where & when

Spruce-fir and mixed high-elevation forest for breeding — Mount Washington's slopes, the North Country. In winter, ground under every feeder in New Hampshire from about mid-October to April. "Snowbird."

The junco is the clock on the feeder year. They breed up high — you can find them singing along the Mount Washington Auto Road in July — and come down with the cold, so their arrival in the yard is a genuinely reliable sign the season has turned. Old New England name: “snowbird.”

Field marks are simple once you commit them: dark hood, pale pink bill, sharp line where the grey breast meets the white belly, and those white outer tail feathers that fan open in flight. Females and young are browner but built the same.

They feed almost entirely on the ground, shuffling and double-scratching through leaf litter and spilled seed, and roost communally in dense conifers on cold nights.