Oregon/Dark-Eyed Junco (male)
Sep 18, 2014. Tuolumne Meadows, Yosemite NP, CA.
This type of dark-eyed junco has a blackish-gray head and breast with a brown back and wings and reddish flanks, tending toward duller and paler plumage in the inland and southern parts of its range. This is the most common form in the west, found in the Pacific coast mountains from southeastern Alaska to extreme northern Baja California, wintering to the Great Plains and northern Sonora.
The dark-eyed junco is a species of junco, a group of small, grayish New World sparrows. This bird is common across much of temperate North America and in summer ranges far into the Arctic. It is a very variable species, much like the related fox sparrow, and its systematics are still not completely untangled.
