Junco

I've always thought that the juncos just migrate through this area, spring and fall. Big flocks of them come to the feeders for a few weeks and then they're gone. But that may not be true. As many as fifteen or twenty blue jays at a time are at our feeders fall and winter. Only a few come in spring. We see them in the woods all summer, but not in our yard. Maybe at least some of the juncos stay for the summer too, finding food they like better than what I'm putting out. I watched a little junco one morning last week marching along a landscape timber outside my window. It was picking up thin strands of dry grass that had grown long so near the timber out of the reach of the lawn mower. Three times I saw it fill up its beak until finally it had to open too wide to accommodate just one more strand. At that point all strands fell back to the ground. This didn't seem to upset the little junco in the least. It calmly started over again with the same predictable result. Was it building a nest? Or just kind of practicing nest building? Or not much thinking about what it was doing at all? Unlike me. I was thinking about it.