Bird Profile

Dark-eyed Junco

The junco is the bird that shows up with the first hard weather and leaves before the leaves are fully out. Feed it on the ground, near cover, and the flock will stay all winter.

The Dark-eyed Junco (Junco hyemalis) is a small ground-feeding sparrow, 5.5 to 6.3 inches (14 to 16 cm) long, dark gray or brown above with a crisp white belly, a pale pink bill and white outer tail feathers that flare open every time it flies. In most of the country it is the bird that arrives with the cold and leaves in early spring, which is where the old name snowbird comes from.

It is also one of the most numerous birds in North America, and one of the easiest to feed. A junco does not want your tube feeder. It wants small seed on the ground, near enough to a hedge or brush pile to vanish into when a hawk goes over.

This profile covers the several regional forms and how to tell them apart, when to expect birds in your area, the ground setup that holds a flock through winter, the pecking order that governs everything they do, and the ground nest most people never see.

How to identify a Dark-eyed Junco#

Three features carry across every form. The bill is small, conical and pale pink, obvious even at a distance. The outer tail feathers are white, and they flash as the bird takes off, which is often the first thing you notice. And the belly is clean white, cut off sharply against a darker hood and back.

The body is round and compact, with a short neck. Juncos hop rather than walk, moving in quick shuffling bursts across the ground and flicking litter aside with their feet.

The common winter sound is a sharp tsick or dit contact note, given constantly within a feeding flock, plus a soft twittering when birds are relaxed. The breeding song is a dry, even musical trill that carries a long way through conifers, similar to a Chipping Sparrow but slower and more musical.

The regional forms#

Dark-eyed Junco is one species covering several distinctive populations, formerly treated as separate species and still often listed by form. You will hear these names constantly in the West.

Females and young birds of every form are duller and browner than adult males, and intermediates turn up regularly where forms overlap in winter. Do not force every bird into a category. The species-level identification is the part that matters.

When and where you will see them#

Juncos breed in cool conifer and mixed forest: across Canada and Alaska, down the Rockies, Sierra Nevada and Cascades, and along the spine of the Appalachians. In those places they are present all year.

Everywhere else they are winter birds. Arrival across the lower 48 runs from late September through November, and departure from late March into April, with dates shifting a few weeks by latitude. Mountain populations often make an elevational move instead, dropping into valleys and foothills when the snow line comes down.

Once settled, a flock uses a home range of a few acres and returns to the same yards day after day, which is why the birds under your feeder in February are the same individuals you watched in December.

Feeding juncos: seed, and where to put it#

The seed list is short and cheap.

• White proso millet is the best single junco food, and it costs a fraction of sunflower. Use it as described in white proso millet.
• Sunflower hearts are eaten readily and leave no hulls on the ground, which matters when the food is on the ground.
• Black oil sunflower works; juncos will crack the thin shells, though more slowly than a finch.
• Cracked corn adds cheap bulk, particularly in hard weather.

Placement matters more than the seed. Scatter a handful on bare ground or on a cleared patch of snow, or better, use a low tray so the seed stays out of the wet. A mesh-bottomed ground feeder or a low platform at 1 to 3 feet (0.3 to 1 m) both work, and both can be lifted and cleaned, which loose scattering cannot.

Cover is the other half of the setup. Juncos feed in the open only when there is somewhere to bolt into within a second or two, so a brush pile or a dense shrub about 10 to 15 feet (3 to 4.5 m) from the feeding patch does more for junco numbers than any change of seed.

Winter flocks and the pecking order#

Juncos winter in flocks of roughly 15 to 25 birds, and those flocks are not random gatherings. They hold a stable dominance hierarchy that the same individuals maintain all season.

Adult males rank highest, then young males, then adult females, then young females. Dominant birds feed at the best spots, in the middle of the patch and closest to cover, and displace subordinates with a short rush, a tail spread or a raised wing. Watch for ten minutes and you can usually work out the order.

Two consequences are worth knowing. First, the constant low-level chasing under a feeder is normal flock business, not a fight for survival. Second, males on average winter farther north than females and immature birds, so the sex ratio at your feeder shifts with latitude: northern yards see more males, southern yards more females.

The white tail edges are part of this system. Birds flash them in disputes, and there is evidence that individuals with more visible white tend to rank higher, though this is one of those correlations that is easier to observe than to explain.

Nesting#

Almost all junco nests are on the ground, tucked into a hollow under a grass tuft, a fallen log, an overhanging bank, a root mass or a shrub. Some western birds nest low in a conifer or, occasionally, in a hanging basket or ledge around buildings.

The nest is an open cup of grass, moss and rootlets lined with fine grass and hair. Clutches run 3 to 5 eggs, incubation takes about 12 to 13 days, and the young leave the nest around 10 to 13 days after hatching, often before they can fly well. Two broods a season is normal.

The summer diet turns strongly to insects: caterpillars, beetles, ants, grasshoppers and spiders make up most of what nestlings are fed, with seed making up the majority of the adult diet the rest of the year.

Hazards worth managing#

Hawks are the other regular visitor to a busy junco patch. A Sharp-shinned Hawk hunting your yard in January is a sign the feeding is going well, and the practical responses are in hawks hunting at your feeder.

Population notes#

The Dark-eyed Junco remains one of the most abundant birds on the continent, with a population in the hundreds of millions. Long-term survey data nonetheless suggest a gradual decline over recent decades, of the kind that is easy to overlook in a species this common.

Nothing about that decline is dramatic or well explained, and juncos are not a conservation concern. They remain an excellent yard bird precisely because they are undemanding.

A setup that holds a junco flock#

• A ground tray or low platform stocked with white proso millet, refreshed daily rather than heaped.
• Cover within 10 to 15 feet (3 to 4.5 m): a brush pile, evergreen or dense hedge.
• A cleared patch of ground kept swept or shoveled after every snowfall.
• Sunflower hearts mixed in during extreme cold, when fat content matters most.
• Glass treated if the feeding patch is in the risky distance band from a window.
• Water. An open water source in freezing weather draws juncos as reliably as seed does. Specific tactics for the species are in how to attract juncos.