Greetings Embracers of the Cold!
The 20th song in the Plant Songs series is called Dark-Eyed Junco.
July 2025 marks ten years since we’ve lived on our property here in Beacon. The first thing I planted was red raspberries in August of that year, then a few native perennials right around the same time. I remember planting Echinacea purpurea, and some Monarda. Since then I’ve continued to plant a combination of food plants, medicinal plants, and native plants to feed wildlife. Ten years in, many plants and many hours (mostly joyous) later, the benefits of all this work are really starting to shine.
This winter I’m noticing a lot of birds feeding on the seeds of last season’s plants. I’m in the habit of leaving the dried stalks of the herbaceous perennials, as well as any seeds or fruit on our native shrubs, standing over the winter. It’s said that insects can over winter in the hollow stems of many of these plants, and also birds can eat the seeds and fruit.
We constantly have a flock of sparrows, house finches, and starlings living off of our chicken system, gleaning anything they can from the chicken yard. This is a little annoying, but I mostly welcome their contributions. As Karl Hammer of Vermont Compost Company says of his operation, we too are “multi-manurial”.
Other wild birds that I’ve observed a lot this winter are Tufted Titmouse / Baeolophus bicolor, mostly eating the seeds of our Vernonia novaborecensis / New York Ironweed, Carolina Wren / Thryothorus ludovicianus, and Dark-Eyed Junco / Junco hyemelis. I see the Juncos almost everyday. Today I saw one hanging out on the Physocarpus opulifolius / Ninebark, just outside the window of the studio. It came by as I was teaching a lesson, just after I had recorded this song.
Of all the birds I’ve observed this winter, I think Dark-Eyed Junco has the most entertaining common name. It sounds like something my younger brother Jake would’ve called me in attempt to insult me when we were kids. “You old dark-eyed junco!” he would’ve said with one eye partially closed.
Musicially, Dark-Eyed Junco is a not too complicated. It uses the B-flat natural minor scale almost exclusively. I came up with a vague idea of what you hear at the beginning - a groove with some repetitive notes - almost more like a guitar part. I refined it a little, and figured out the order of the bass notes that I wanted. Then came the task of writing a melody over it. As I worked on the melody, the choice came up of how repetitive to be, both rhythmically and pitch-wise. I opted for more repetition this time, wondering if it might end up being a little catchier that way. I don’t think I have a way of knowing if that’s the case or not, unless I were to forget about it for a couple years, and then listen again. I tend to lose some objectivity during the composing process. I especially remember this happening while arranging for the 24 Standards project; working out all the chord voicings and countermelodies, using a lot of chromaticism, it was really easy to get caught up going down a path into weirdness, losing objectivity. And then I’d have to take a day or two off and come back to it to really hear it for what it was.
Anyway, Dark-Eyed Junco was a fun song to practice. I think more time with it would inspire some different choices in the pitches I use in my improvisation. First I was content to stick with a B-flat natural minor scale, which is almost exclusively what you hear on this recording. But I was starting to get tired of it and feeling ready to explore some other choices.
Hope you’re staying warm during the coldest cold snap we’ve had here since we’ve lived in Beacon. Remember, it’s good for us to feel the cold sometimes. Thanks for listening and reading!