Distinguished by Juncoes

The photo atop this blog entry is of a dark-eyed junco. He is staring at the neighbors who live below me as he stands on a ledge which surrounds my garden that's located on a rooftop in NYC). 

And the following images are of him spending time on my garden's ledge.

According to Cornell, "Dark-eyed Juncos are neat, even flashy little sparrows that flit about forest floors of the western mountains and Canada, then flood the rest of North America for winter. They’re easy to recognize by their crisp (though extremely variable) markings and the bright white tail feathers they habitually flash in flight. One of the most abundant forest birds of North America, you’ll see juncos on woodland walks as well as in flocks at your feeders or on the ground beneath them."

I always am honored when this bird type makes their annual visit to my garden which they've done around this time for a number of consecutive years! This past week I was especially thrilled to see that these juncoes hop about my place, and to know that they were not deterred by the outcome of the 2016 Presidential election in their annual traveling from Canada to the United States. For as you may know, dear reader, pre-election and post-election conversations have been filled with folks pondering a move to Canada. 

Be that as it may, my seeing the juncoes, prompted me to recall a quotation I referenced in an April 2016 Blogger entry in which I wrote about sparrows. Seeing the sparrows enjoying the kiwi vines in my garden caused me to think of one of my favorite Henry David Thoreau quotes: “I once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a moment, while I was hoeing in a village garden, and I felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance than I should have been by any epaulet I could have worn.”