Get to Know the Yellow-eyed Junco
Or, as locals in the Southwest once called it, the "lightning bird."
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Transcript:
This is BirdNote.
The Dark-eyed Junco is one of the most abundant backyard birds in North America. Every September, hordes of them move south from the boreal forest, to winter across the US and southern Canada.
The familiar gray and white 鈥渟nowbird鈥 is not our only junco, though.
In the Southwest, a different species, the Yellow-eyed Junco, lives in cool mountain forests from Arizona and New Mexico, through Mexico into Guatemala. The southern bird shares the neat plumage and ground-hugging habits of its dark-eyed cousin.
But its eyes are an improbably bright golden-yellow, like tiny brass buttons, polished to a brilliant shine and pinned to the little bird鈥檚 face.
The great explorer and ornithologist, Francis Sumichrast was in Veracruz, Mexico in the 1860s. He reported that the locals called the junco echa-lumbre [AITCH-ah LOOMbray], the caster of fire, or lightning bird. The Veracrucians, he explained, thought the birds were phosphorescent, collecting light during the day and releasing it at night in the dim pine forests.
One look at the Yellow-eyed Junco鈥檚 weird spangled eyes, and you might almost believe it yourself.
For BirdNote, I鈥檓 Michael Stein.
Today鈥檚 show brought to you by the Bobolink Foundation.
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Credits:
Bird sounds provided by The Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York. 77216 recorded by Curtis A. Marantz, 174114 recorded by Lucas DeCicco, and 109103 recorded by Geoffrey A. Keller.
BirdNote's theme music was composed and played by Nancy Rumbel and John Kessler. Producer: John Kessler
Executive Producer: Sallie Bodie
漏 2016 Tune In to Nature.org October 2018 Narrator: Michael Stein