Junco hyemalis
Order Passeriformes
Family Passerellidae
Other names: Snowbird, Slate-colored Junco
♂ Adult male.— Head, back, throat, and breast slate-gray, the latter sharply defined from the white belly; two outer tail-feathers and part of the third, white.
♀ Adult female.— The upper parts browner; throat and breast paler.
Immature.— Upper parts, throat, and breast streaked.
Nest, often built in the side of road, or in a depression in a bank, or on the ground.
Eggs, white, spotted with brown.
The Snowbird is a common winter resident of southern Connecticut and Rhode Island, and the lower Hudson Valley, and not uncommon along the Massachusetts coast as far north as Boston. In the interior, where snow is deep during much of the winter, the Snowbird occurs only as a migrant, through April, and again in late September and October. On the higher summits of Berkshire and Worcester counties, on the Catskills, and in northern New England and New York, wherever there are patches of spruce, the Snowbird is a common summer resident. In winter flocks frequent the warm slopes where weedy patches have been laid bare, in severe weather often coming about the house and barn, particularly if seed is scattered for them. In the spring migration they are found at the edges of cultivated fields, and along the roadsides; and in the autumn in more open woodland. They breed either on rocky mountain tops, where they occur higher up than any other bird, or in spruce forests, particularly where there are clearings or pastures.
The Snowbird’s song is a pleasant little jingle, like the clinking of bits of metal struck rapidly together. (See under Chipping Sparrow.) The bird sings often from a stone, or from the top of an evergreen. It has also a smack of alarm, a peu peu peu, uttered when two birds are quarreling, and a twittering sound given when one bird starts to fly, apparently to keep the flock together.
The pure white V made by the outer tail-feathers, when the bird rises from the ground, or the dark cowled appearance of the head, as it is seen from below, easily distinguish it.
Hoffmann – A Guide to the Birds of New England and Eastern New York (1904)