98
Dark-eyed Juncos come in 5 different color forms, but only the slate-colored (pictured above) is commonly found in Wisconsin (the other forms are found in places like the Rockies, the Black Hills, or Baja California).
Just to make things more confusing, the female slate-colored forms sometimes have more brown coloring on their sides like this bird:
Last week during the snowstorm I spotted a junco that doesn’t look like any of the 5 forms, and it even sports more brown than the normal females I see at my feeders (notice the brown on the upper breast compared to the bird pictured above):
The pedigree of this little bird remains a mystery to me, but one thing is clear…she was not the most popular kid in the block:
