junco

• Recently a sharp-shinned hawk captured, killed and ate a black-eyed junco in our backyard.
• Why did that particular junco, rather than one of the other dozens of small birds �gold finches, house finches, pine siskins, redpolls, tree sparrows, downy woodpeckers, hairy woodpeckers and tufted titmice, as well as juncos � that visit our feeders become prey to that hawk?
• Or was the unlucky junco sick or recovering from an injury which impaired its ability to flee or seek cover from danger?
• An evolutionary biologist might raise the possibility that the slaughtered junco inherited poor genes, which made it less able to identify the presence of danger quickly and to undertake appropriate avoidance behavior or retarded its ability to flee a pursuer.
• In the grand scheme of things, the biologist would argue, if the dead junco had not yet parented offspring, its death might have prevented the passing on of inferior genes, and the lessening of the capacity of its species to survive.

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