Robin Junco flip

I perceived we were having an unusual influx of Dark-eyed Junco this spring so I generated some eBird charts to double check.

Sure enough, there are a lot of them all of a sudden and this is quite different from last year.

With this year, 2018 on the left, and last year on the right, we can see there's been a total flip of numbers of Juncos compared to Robins.  AND they both have arrived (according to eBird reports) a bit earlier.  Mind you, we did not get the huge late dumps of snow this year as we did last year.  Still, it is mostly road edges and bare spots under trees that are providing habitat.

This makes me very happy - that there are lots of Juncos.  There has been a darth of them in the fall the last couple of years so perhaps this bodes well for the population.

I loved watching them below my living room window this morning, just feet away, no binos (or "goggles" as the RDEK planner called them the other night at a Wasa OCP open house) required.  How they could find last year's salsify seeds, minus parachute, in between the stems of creeping Thyme boggles my mind.  Then, one was actually singing from its perch on my orange honeysuckle - a rare treat.

Happy birding!