Many boreal birds spend their days in the Northwoods. Meet the avian travelers that find their way south from the Arctic and boreal regions.
Boreal Birds Come in With the Cold
Updated on Sep. 25, 2024
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What Are Boreal Birds?
When cooler weather arrives and some of your favorite summer birds escape to warmer climates, it doesn’t mean the birding season is over. Instead, as the temperature drops, a different set of species may arrive from the boreal forests and Arctic tundra of the far north. Some are reliable visitors that show up every year, while others are much more irregular. Here are a few notable boreal birds to watch for.
Boreal Bird Migration
Some birds that fly south into the U.S. during the winter migrate every year, such as juncos. Others are much more irregular. When their flocks suddenly appear, often after an absence of several years, it’s known as an irruption.
Where Is the Boreal Forest?
The boreal forest stretches across the northern part of the continent from Alaska to Newfoundland. According to the Boreal Songbird Initiative, 325 bird species breed there in the summer months.
How to Attract Boreal Birds
To have good numbers of birds in your yard in winter, keep your feeders filled during mid- to late fall. Visitors arriving from the north will find your feeders much more quickly if local resident birds are coming to them already. A bird like a redpoll, arriving from the Arctic wilderness, may never have seen a bird feeder before, so it will take its clues by watching to see what the locals are eating.
Types of Boreal Birds to Know
Dark-Eyed Junco
One of the most widespread and abundant songbirds of cooler climates, the dark-eyed junco is found in summer across most of Alaska and Canada, and it’s present year-round in the northeastern states, along much of the Pacific coast, and at high elevations in the Appalachians and many mountains of the West. But in the lowlands across most of the U.S., juncos are winter visitors.
Often affectionately referred to as snowbirds, they gather in small flocks around woodland edges and backyards. They’ll come to an open platform feeder for millet and other small seeds, but they’re just as likely to forage on the ground under the feeder.
Although eastern juncos are all slate gray and white, those in the West are more varied, often with pink or reddish brown on the back and sides.
Evening Grosbeak
Gray and gold with white wing markings and a big pale beak, the evening grosbeak was mostly a western bird before the 1890s. Then it extended its breeding range eastward across the boreal forest to eastern Canada and New England. It is famously nomadic in winter, wandering in flocks, sometimes appearing far south of its main range.
Evening grosbeaks are expensive guests at the bird feeder—a flock can consume monumental amounts of black oil sunflower seeds. But they’re such beautiful visitors that most backyard birders are happy to pay the price to have them stick around.
Red-Breasted Nuthatch
A perky acrobat of evergreen forests, this bird walks down trees headfirst like other nuthatches, but it’s known by its pale red-orange breast and black eye stripe. Red-breasted nuthatches can be found in summer in boreal forests and in high mountains, and they may stay there all year. But some travel south in fall, and sometimes they come flooding southward, all across the lower 48 states. Even in winter, they usually stick to evergreen trees, but they can be enticed to feeders for peanuts, suet or sunflower seeds.
Pine Grosbeak
Forest birds of the far north and the high mountains, pine grosbeaks are never seen in large numbers. In some winters, small flocks wander through the Northeast and the Upper Midwest. They’re attracted to fruiting crabapple and mountain ash trees. They also stop by bird feeders for sunflower and other seeds.
Pine grosbeaks have stubby black bills and two white wing bars; adult males are rose-red and gray, while females and young males are mostly gray, with some yellow on the head.
American Tree Sparrow
Despite their name, American tree sparrows don’t have any special connection to trees. They spend summers in Alaska and northern Canada, mostly in open habitats north of the tree line, among scrubby willows on the tundra. In late fall, they migrate south to southern Canada and the northern half of the U.S., flocking to brushy fields and backyards, often with juncos.
The American tree sparrow has a reddish brown cap like a chipping sparrow, but it’s larger, with two white wing bars and a bicolor black-and-yellow bill.
Bohemian Waxwing
Related to cedar waxwings that are common across the continent, Bohemian waxwings are larger and more colorful, with reddish undertail feathers and white and yellow marks on the wings. They live mostly in Alaska and northwestern Canada during all seasons, gathering in winter flocks that may number in the hundreds, feeding on the fruits of junipers, mountain ash, hawthorns, Russian olive and many other trees.
In some winters, perhaps when food is scarce in their main range, large flocks move to the east and south. During these flights, they may reach the easternmost regions of Canada and New England. A few flocks delight observers throughout the northern states.
Redpoll
This tiny finch is a true denizen of the Arctic. Its summer range extends to the northern edge of the Canadian and Alaskan mainland, on open tundra north of the tree line. In winter, redpolls often gather in active, twittering flocks, some staying in the Arctic, others moving toward southern Canada.
During some seasons, big flocks sweep across the border into the northern states, gathering in brushy fields and woodland edges. At backyard feeders, redpolls are attracted to Nyjer (thistle) and other small seeds that typically lure goldfinches and siskins. Redpolls are named for their small red caps. They’re also known by their black chins, small size and overall pale look.
Sources
- Boreal Songbird Initiative
- Finch Research Network
