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You won't find "snowbird" in any field guide, but nearly all Southerners learned to recognize the snowbird when they were very young. A snowbird is an elegant two-tone gray bird (dark gray on the head and back, light gray on the belly) with dark eyes and a light-colored, conical bill. When it snows in the South, snowbirds appear as if by magic in our yards, as if begging for bread. Their gray shapes and faint chattering ("tickering," as Roger Tory Peterson called it) are as much a part of the Southern snow experience as sledding or digging your car out of the ditch.
Sometimes we notice snowbirds before it snows, when the sky is gray overhead and the northeast wind is rising. "It's going to snow," we say, "I know, because I saw a snowbird."
Guess what. They're back. Everywhere. In the fields, in your yards at home, and on the schoolyard. Snowbirds don't wait for the snow; it's just that traditionally we don't look for them until we see the first flakes.
More than likely, snowbirds don't even like the snow. They are related to sparrows, and like sparrows they eat mostly seeds in the winter. Snow covers up the seeds, which is bad for them. That's why they come around buildings, hoping for a a bare patch of grass or a quick handout from us. Unlike many sparrows, they like to forage in open, grassy fields and lawns, away from shrubbery. This preference for open areas makes them one of the most common birds of school campuses during the winter.
Do you have a feeder near your classroom window? If not, November is a good time to get one started. Birds are just arriving for the winter. If you can attract them now, they may stick around for the whole season. (When the holidays come, make sure someone comes to the school to refill the feeder, especially if the weather is bad.) Snowbirds are easily attracted to feeders, although usually they feed on the ground, underneath the feeder, eating the seeds dropped by cardinals, blue jays, and other birds.
"Snowbird" isn't in the index of your field guide because the bird is properly called a junco. For a long time it was known as the slate-colored junco, but more recently it has been called the dark-eyed junco. Your field guide will have it under one of these names.
Snowbirds, or juncos, nest in cool forests, particularly evergreen forests of spruce or hemlock. They nest in our North Carolina mountains at elevations above 3000 feet. In the winter, juncos migrate to warmer climates, but no farther than they have to--the birds we see may have nested only a few hundred miles to the north.
"Junco" is also the bird's scientific name (Junco hyemalis, to be complete about it). It's interesting that northerners don't notice the bird enough to have a common name for it. The Southern name "snowbird" is really the only familiar name it has. And this is fairly appropriate, because the birds actually spend more time in the South than they do in the North. Snowbirds arrive here around Hallowe'en, and if you watch carefully you'll see that they are still here after Easter, often as late as May Day.
Look for snowbirds at school, and point them out to your students. Be sure to tell them "junco" is the real name. If you have a classroom feeder, students might learn something from keeping some records. How many juncos come to the feeder? Are there more in various kinds of bad weather? What kinds of seed do they prefer? Do their numbers increase or decrease during the winter? How late in the school year do they stay? Do they interact with each other? Not many other animals are likely to present themselves so conveniently outside your classroom window!
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Posted November 3, 1997. Features remain online as long as they remain current; they may be updated if new information becomes available.
Copyright © 1997, Center for Mathematics and Science Education. Teachers have permission to duplicate this page for use in teaching their own classes. All other rights reserved. You are welcome to link to this page, but do not copy its contents.
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