When Reese Lukei sent me this photo of a slate colored junco in his yard, I was jealous. This is the first year I can remember that I have not seen these little winter visitors from the far north.

In the past, I could walk out of my door on a cold morning and see and hear them scritch-scratching the leaves in the garden looking for seeds, mainly dropped by my goldenrod. They would hop, foraging among the leaf litter, and often fly up in a small flock when I startled them.

This fall, I made a mistake in not thinking about the juncos when I transplanted all the goldenrod to another spot in the garden, cleaned up the bed and replaced the goldenrod with smaller plants. It shows what happens when you mess with Mother Nature and remove fallen seeds and leaves before spring!

I am sure the juncos have depended on that goldenrod, a great fall seed producer, for many years. Little juncos, I promise that hereafter, I will always leave my garden be for the winter!

Juncos will eat feeder seeds, but I never saw them at my feeder. I am sure they foraged seeds from underneath at times, but if so, they don’t remember this year, I’m sorry to say.

You will sometimes hear these birds called dark-eyed juncos, but our East Coast birds are better known as slate colored juncos. The small sparrows have dark gray heads and backs and white bellies. When they fly and spread their tails, you can see white underneath their tails too.

Juncos breed in forests in Canada and Alaska. Our winter weather must feel like a cool breeze to them.

The other little birds from the far north I’ve missed this year are the white-throated sparrows that probably miss my goldenrod too. Their white throat is an obvious ID mark. Like the juncos, they are migrants from the far north. They also are seed foragers, but you may see them up on your feeder too.

Unlike the juncos, whose song is unremarkable, the white-throated sparrow’s sweet song sounds a bit like, “Oh, Canada, Oh Canada.”

These two sparrows stand out from our other sparrows in winter and can turn a gray day into a sunny one with their appearance. I miss them.