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Winter visitors are on the way

By the time you read this, there should be a chill in the air. It will finally feel like fall. And as days shorten and cooler temperatures prevail, it’s time to watch for some migrating birds to return for the winter.

The earliest and most reliable of these winter visitors are dark-eyed juncos, the quintessential harbinger of winter. Call them juncos or snowbirds, their return means snow will soon fly.

Juncos typically return in October and stay the winter. Their arrival means that winter is coming, and their departure in April is good news for observant nature watchers anxious for spring.

Dark-eyed juncos breed in northern forests all the way to the tundra. They find our temperate winters down right balmy. Permanent populations also live at higher elevations throughout the Appalachian Mountains.

Juncos are among the easiest feeder birds to identify. The male’s slate gray head, neck, back and upper breast contrast sharply with its snow-white belly and lower breast. In flight, white outer tail feathers flash conspicuously. Add a distinctly pink bill, and he’s complete. Females are patterned similarly, but their dark parts are more brownish-gray.

According to the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology’s Project FeederWatch, juncos are usually seen at more feeders across the continent than any other species. They prefer white millet, cracked corn, and black-oil sunflower seeds scattered on the ground or on low platform feeders.

Winter flocks of juncos number 10 to 30 individuals. Watch the juncos that come to your yard carefully, and you’ll only see one flock at a time. Winter flocks defend feeding territories — they don’t tolerate intrusions from other flocks. Unless it gets really cold and snowy. I’ve counted as many as 47 juncos beneath my feeders during a snowstorm.

My favorite winter visitors are red-breasted nuthatches. They are acrobatic, fearless, and friendly, and their voice sounds like a toy tin horn. Unfortunately red-breasted nuthatches don’t visit my backyard every year. They are “irruptive migrants” who only move this far south when northern coniferous forests produce a poor seed crop.

Like our residential white-breasted nuthatch, red-breasts are acrobatic birds that often climb head-first down tree trunks or spiral around horizontal branches. This behavior alone makes nuthatches easy to recognize. Red-breasts are a bit smaller than white-breasts and distinguished by their rusty underparts, white eyebrows, and black eye lines. Look for them in mixed flocks with chickadees, titmice, and kinglets.

When red-breasted nuthatches appear, I also look for pine siskins, another irruptive migrant. These goldfinch-sized finches use their sharp pointy bill to husk black-oil sunflower seeds and Nyjer. In flight, these little streaky brown birds flash patches of yellow on their tail and wings.

Of all the winter birds that visit my backyard, tree sparrows have traveled the farthest and usually arrive shortly before Christmas. They quickly find the white millet, cracked corn, and black-oil sunflower seeds that fall from feeders hanging overhead.

Despite their name, tree sparrows are not forest birds. They come from northern Canada and Alaska where they live among the stunted trees and shrubs of the tundra. In the fall, tree sparrows head south in search of food and more hospitable weather. By mid to late December, they reach the temperate latitudes.

I find visits by tree sparrows particularly gratifying because they travel so far. Here, tree sparrows inhabit old fields, forest edges, and marshes where they roam in flocks of 30 to 40 individuals. Within these flocks, smaller sub-groups of four to eight birds travel and feed together. Look for these smaller groups to visit feeding stations. Away from feeders, they subsist almost entirely on seeds of weeds and grasses.

A tree sparrow is among the easiest of all the native sparrows to identify. Look for a rusty cap, a rusty line through the eye, a distinctly two-toned bill (dark above, yellow below), two white wing bars and most conspicuously, a plain gray breast punctuated by a dark central spot. This distinctive “stickpin” makes identification easy even for beginners.

Like it or not, winter is on its way. Just ask the birds.

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Scott Shalaway can be heard on Birds & Nature from 3 to 4 p.m. Sundays on 620 KHB Radio, Pittsburgh or live online anywhere at khbradio.com. Visit his Web site drshalaway.com or contact him directly at sshalaway@aol.com or 2222 Fish Ridge Road, Cameron, WV 26033.

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