Dark-eyed Junco, Junco hyemalis


Dark-eyed Junco
The juncos are year-round residents near our house, where they have nested in ground cover, in standing plants, potted ones, and at least twice in a front-door wreath (see below). This species, widely distributed in North America, is divided into several different types, formerly recognized as four different species in the US: Oregon, Slate-colored, Gray-headed, and White-winged. In the SF Bay Area, we have the Oregon type, with the occasional Slate-colored. Male Oregon juncos, see above and below, have a darker and more solid-colored hood than Oregon females, though the distinction is not always sharp.
 


Dark-eyed Junco


Dark-eyed Junco
The female Oregon junco above is carrying a moth to feed her young in a park near our house in 2008; below, in 2005 on our back deck, a female feeds a fledgling, showing more clearly the mix of brown feathers with dark gray on the head. The juvenile has the all-over brown striping that is standard for all types of Dark-eyed Junco. In at least different three years, we have had junco nests parasitized by Brown-headed Cowbirds; a look at that page will show small juncos struggling to incubate and then feed the much larger cowbird offspring.


Dark-eyed Juncos


Dark-eyed Juncos
Junco nestlings form a feathered carpet on the bottom of the neatly woven cup nest in a hanging flower pot of geraniums in our back yard in 2010. The five visible eyes in this picture show the number of young birds crammed together in this nest; three of them are also showing the bright yellow "lips" (rictal flanges) of their bills. The striped juvenal plumage is fully developed, indicating that these young birds are ready to leave the nest. And indeed they did early on the morning after this photo was taken, which we estimated to have been the eleventh day after the birds hatched. I bent over and peered into the nest and all five birds exploded out in my face, leaving me with a seriously pounding heart.
 

Dark-eyed Juncos
In 2018, the male parent visits nest with three nestlings, two of which are visible in the picture above, one begging with bill wide open showing bright yellow rictal flanges, the other mostly obscured by the leaf. This nest was in the bottom of a wreath hanging on the front door of our house; the picture above was taken in August when the nestlings were nearly ready to fledge. The earlier picture below gave a broader view of the front-door wreath as the adult female began to incubate the newly laid eggs in mid-July.

Dark-eyed Junco

Dark-eyed Juncos
Above, two junco fledglings bathing and facing off in our back yard in May 2018. Four young birds had fledged a few days previous from a nest well concealed in an eye-level planter just outside our kitchen. Their parents were probably the same pair that later that summer would give birth to three young juncos in the front door wreath nest shown in the two pictures further above, only a few yards from the nest just described. More photos of the Oregon Dark-eyed Juncos that have nested around our house, and in some cases had their nests parasitized by Brown-headed Cowbirds, are collected here.

Dark-eyed Junco
The Slate-colored, shown above and below, is the most widespread of the Dark-eyed Junco types, found across most of North America. This type shows little or no contrast between head and body color. Males like the bird below, photographed in Alaska, are more uniformly dark gray above, while females, as in the photo above, show more brown. Slate-coloreds are common in California north of San Francisco Bay, including coastal Sonoma County, where the bird above was photographed. 


Dark-eyed Junco


Dark-eyed Junco
The Pink-sided type of Dark-eyed Junco, shown above in New Mexico, winters there and in eastern Arizona and west Texas, and nests mostly in Montana and Wyoming. The hood is relatively pale gray, with pronounced dark lores, and the breast, back and flanks are extensively pinkish. Before the four former junco species were lumped under the single designation Dark-eyed Junco, the Pink-sided was sometimes considered a fifth species, but more often was treated as a subspecies of the Oregon Junco.


Dark-eyed Junco
The Gray-headed type, shown above, winters in the Southwest like the Pink-sided, but nests further south, mostly in Utah and Colorado. The well-defined rufous mantle and the absence of color on the flanks distinguish it from the Pink-sided in appearance. The Gray-headed bird below, photographed in Chihuahua, Mexico, shows a rufous patch on the crown that may be an individual anomaly, as I have not found it described in the literature. Gray-headed Dark-eyed Juncos overlap in range with the Yellow-eyed Junco, recognized as a separate species, in southeastern Arizona and down into Mexico, and their plumage is quite similar to that of the Yellow-eyed.


Dark-eyed Junco