I’ve been waiting for this guy. He’s a Junco, a Slate-colored Junco.  For some reason I am very fond of these little birds and shortly after I moved to Fawn Hill I asked my neighbor if there were Juncos. “Sometimes,” she said, “In the winter.”  And that squared with my memory of Juncos.  I first became acquainted with them in Washington, D.C.  For a period of time we had an apartment with a lovely deck just off the living room and in winter the Juncos would come and hop around searching for food.  We traveled a lot in those days and somehow never got into the bird feeder thing even though there were many varieties of birds there in downtown Washington, DC, including numerous raptors. The Juncos were only around in the winter and they charmed me with their white breast and pinkish beak.  It didn’t take long to figure out that when the Juncos arrived it was going to be cold and it came as no surprise to me that they summer in the Arctic Circle.  Forecast for Franklin this weekend?  An “arctic blast” arrives on Sunday.  ❧