This is bird note.

The dark-eyed junko is one of the most abundant backyard birds in North America.

Every September, hordes of them move south from the boreal forest to winter across the US and southern Canada.

The familiar gray and white snowbird is not our only junko though.

In the southwest, a different species.

The yellow-eyed junko lives in cool mountain forests from Arizona and New Mexico.

Through Mexico into Guatemala, the southern bird shares the neat plumage and ground-hugging habits of its dark-eyed cousin.

But its eyes are an improbably bright golden yellow,

like tiny brass buttons,

polished to a brilliant shine and pinned to the little bird's face.

The great explorer in ornithologist Francis Sumicrest was in Vericruz, Mexico in the 1860s.

He reported that the locals called the junko Aetcha Lumbre,

the caster of fire, or lightning bird. The Veracrucians, he explained, thought the birds were

phosphorescent, collecting light during the day, and releasing it at night in the dim pine forests.

One look at the yellow-eyed junko's weird spangled eyes,

and you might almost believe it yourself.

For Bird Note, I'm Michael Stein. Today's show brought to you by

the Bobbilink Foundation.