A sign that, in my increasing dotage, I have indeed become some sort of birder is that the formerly dull same-old-same-old grey birds people call juncos now have my close attention.

In my house as a child, they were called snowbirds; we simply ignored them.

Nowadays I see the snowbirds and wonder stuff like: how much lighter is that one? Wow, what a lot of reddish colour in that one. Is that one taller? What is that other sparrow with them? And so on.

This light-coloured one (perhaps a female) was with a batch of much darker ones (probably males) this morning checking out some Nyjer seed scattered in one of the flower boxes.