Just juncos

Spent some time watching my birds over the weekend. I know it's ridiculous to call them my birds; they don't recognize my authority or even thank me for the birdseed that miraculously appears in our outdoor feeders, but if it's possible to possess a portion of bird life simply by watching, then they are my birds.

Winter birds are more subtle and less spectacular than our summer visitors. Bluejays and cardinals and woodpeckers' red heads bring the occasional flash of color, and the nuthatches' blue-gray backs stand out against snowy branches. But most winter birds are small and unspectacular: the little downy woodpeckers dressed as if for a white-tie dinner blend into the mottled bark of the trees, and the chickadees and titmice look as if they need a spring makeover.

But most of all I watch the juncos. I don't know when they plan to leave in the spring but I know exactly when they arrived last fall: they just showed up en masse on the day before Thanksgiving. One minute the usual suspects were gathered haphazardly around the feeders, and the next minute the ground was hopping with juncos. There's nothing spectacular about this little bird with its charcoal-gray back and flashes of white, but they stand out like exclamation points against the snow-covered yard, hopping here and there in search of dropped seeds. The dead winter yard is alive with motion as the juncos hop and scoot and flit from here to there, and then they're gone and it's quiet again.

I probably won't even notice when they leave; I'll be too busy looking for spring visitors, waiting to hear the orioles's songs again and watching as kingfishers chatter and chase each other in their turbulent territorial fights. The juncos that enliven our winter lawn will just disappear one day and I'll forget all about them until next winter when suddenly they'll come back and the lawn will be hopping again.