Junco Goodness

Today has been such a weird day. So what do you do on April 1 and you wake up to eight inches of snow?

Well, you could go a little crazy like Lorraine did and melt some beeswax and drop globs of snow in to watch it form hard yellow clumps of wax.

I opted to spend some quality time with a brush pile. It's covered in juncos as usual and I was surprised to find a Lincoln's sparrow lurking among them. Alas, it moved way too quickly for me to digiscope it.

I scattered some seed on some of the branch ends that were sitting in the direct light of the setting sun. As soon as I would turn my back and walk ten feet back to my spotting scope, the juncos would hop out to feed.

A few chickadees flew in to partake of the seed as well.

If you look closely at the above bird, you might notice little pin feathers around its face--it's molting. I always wonder what it must be like to molt and feel little pin pricks where new feathers are poking through--and some species do this twice in a year. Do you suppose there's bird PMS (pre molt syndrome)?

Speaking of PMS, my goodness the snow made some people cranky. It's funny because in November we smile and welcome the snow, knowing more is yet to come. By the time it's mid March we have run out of love for the snow. I felt the crankiness coming over me and decided that I just need to pay attention to the juncos, after all they will be leaving our area soon.

The juncos are getting a bit more tetchy lately, there's a bit more fighting over food and you can hear some of them start to do a territory song which they haven't done all winter. Soon they will be gone and I'll be swooning over warblers and vireos, only to be tired of those in September and longing for juncos once again--it's a vicious cycle.