Date: 4/28/25 11:39 am From: Dorothy Anderson <andersondorothy72...> Subject: Re: [MASSBIRD] April 18, 205, Newton (NH): Did folks notice that a lot of juncos had departed, yesterday?
Just fyi, as of today, I still have one Junco in Newton. Poor guy must
have been left behind.
---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Matt S. <accipiter22...>
Date: Sat, Apr 19, 2025 at 9:56 PM
Subject: Re: [MASSBIRD] April 18, 205, Newton (NH): Did folks notice that a
lot of juncos had departed, yesterday?
To: GLENN D'ENTREMONT <gdentremont1...>
CC: <Massbird...>
You hit the nail on the head...for me August 1 has the same sort of
feeling. Up until then I can find something, anything making noise and
singing. Go up into the mountains, wherever, you can find bird sounds. I
keep a journal of sorts, and I mention that the frenetic pace of New
England life, both human and avian, goes full-tilt, with people moving full
speed from May through July. Then August hits and everything kind of
dissipates all at once; I wrote something like "who makes memories in
August?" When I was in school my mom always said July was the safe month;
school a fading memory, and the month after that you still were on
vacation. But then August does come...and suddenly it seems like every
single insect is contributing to this bassline during the day, and a
mourning dove plaintively calling is a treasure, and somehow fits in with
the otherwise still air. Evenings you get the blanket of crickets...and
yes, it's hard to believe but you have 6 months until bird song picks up
again. It's not just late August either, it seems like right off the bat
every year, still definitely summer, the Sun yellowing in the afternoon but
not yet fading as it does in September, accompanied by that "loud" silence.
On Fri, Apr 18, 2025 at 8:26 PM GLENN D'ENTREMONT <gdentremont1...>
wrote:
> Yes, the absence of sound is deafening! I have two days in a calendar
> year which I dislike: the first will make sense to most-the first Monday
> evening in November after the clocks move back and driving home in the
> dark.
>
> The second one is equally as ominous to me; August 1. That's the day the
> birds go silent. August becomes the month of insects-katydids, crickets,
> cicadas, a constant din, but more subtle than the in your face bird song.
> One has to wait until late February to begin to get a daily dose of bird
> song.
>
> Glenn
>
> Glenn d'Entremont: <gdentremont1...> Stoughton, MA
>
> On 04/18/2025 9:01 AM EDT Matt S. <accipiter22...> wrote:
>
>
> Hi All,
>
> We've had at least 10 juncos, give or take, in our yard all winter,
> sometimes much more. For the past six weeks or so they've been singing,
> and the past few weeks it's been a constant high-pitched trilling roar. It
> makes the yard more exciting, I think. Yesterday when I stepped outside I
> noticed a complete silence, accented by the fact that even the cardinals
> and various finches weren't singing either. I figured there was a predator
> nearby, as I went about my yard, some things called here or there, but no
> juncos. The absence of their song was loud, if that makes sense. The
> world seemed a little stiller without their song. I noticed a couple were
> still here, pursuing each other aggressively around the yard as they've
> been doing, but through the several hours I was outside I only noticed a
> couple bars of song from them. Anyone else have their yard juncos ride
> out on the warm air the last few days?
>
> I always enjoy juncos, when I was young and still learning about birds, I
> thought it was interesting that southward migration included birds that
> came south to New England for the winter. Juncos were a pretty easy ID,
> even for a kid, and a book I read said that Native American populations in
> the area called them snowbirds, since they usually portended winter. I
> would track how many weeks they arrived before first snow hit. I was
> equally excited by white-throated sparrows coming in, but I don't recall
> them in the kind of numbers we had juncos.
>
> Safe travels friends!
>
> Matt S
> Newton, NH
> <Accipiter22...>
>
>
