northeast-flora-and-fauna

Here's another bird that I'm seeing and hearing quite a bit of lately, presumably signaling their breeding season too: the Eastern Towhee . The towhees are our largest sparrows , and the Eastern Towhee is also one of the most distinctively colored sparrows too, making them easier to ID than the sparrows that are a variation of the little brown bird. My field guide says that they're singing things like "jink denk te-e-e-e-e-e" and calling things like "chewink" or "zhwink", but to me I'm hearing it more like a lispy "thweet". And I've been hearing quite a bit of it over the last couple weeks. Yesterday I talked about how the Northern Flicker used to be considered 2 different species but are now considered 1. That theme is reversed with the Eastern Towhee, which along with the similar-looking Spotted Towhee used to be considered the Rufus-sided Towhee. The Spotted Towhee is lives out west but will interbreed with the Eastern T...

If you're walking through or near woods and hear someone singing, it might be a good thing to get out the binoculars and scan the trees. I was at Fairview Farm when I overheard this Eastern Towhee singing his heart out. Some people think their song sounds like they're singing "drink your tea", despite the fact that tea is typically unavailable while walking through the woods. The black on the head/back/wings identifies this as a male; if the black was a dark brown it'd be a female. If he finds a companion, they could raise two broods this year. (In the south they sometimes do 3 broods.) Eastern Towhees are a kind of sparrow. Their nearest relative is the similar-looking Spotted Towhee , with whom they'll sometimes hybridize. You probably don't need to know how to tell them apart though since the Spotteds are rarely east of western Iowa/Missouri. May 14, 2021 at Fairview Farm Photo 132039121, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)