Of a Feather: A gaudy kind of sparrow

By BILL CHAISSON
By Bill Chaisson

You have perhaps noticed that this is the time of year for seeing fledglings and juvenile birds. Last week, I saw winter wren feeding two fledglings that looked bigger than she was because remnants of down were sticking out in all directions. Yesterday, I saw a young waxwing sitting in the middle of Gile Pond Road, apparently stunned by a collision with a car but alive. I moved it over to the edge of the woods to prevent it from being squished, but when I checked on it on my return trip, it hadn’t made it. Sometimes it’s tough to be a bird.

I have started to hear an even greater diversity of birds out my window in the morning. I wonder whether parent birds are foraging in different parts of their territories as they feed wandering fledglings or if they are simply empty-nesters that have begun to forage more widely. In any case, earlier this week I heard a veery sing briefly from the hedge that lines the Lane River in my backyard, and yesterday I heard a towhee give its eponymous call from the same place.

I have had a long history with towhees; they have passed in and out of my life as I have moved from place to place. I first saw one in the summer of 1972 on the Blue Ridge in Virginia. My family was on a camping vacation to Shenandoah National Park and during a day hike we heard a bird giving its ‘drink your TEEEE’ song from up in an oak tree. An elderly woman—your classic birdwatcher with the floppy hat and clothing with multiple pockets—was standing in the trail with her binoculars trained on it. Delighted that I was interested, she said, “You don’t usually see them that high up in a tree; they are more likely to be on top of a shrub and forage on the ground.”

We were looking at an eastern towhee (Piplio erythrophthalmus), which was still called the rufous-sided towhee in 1972. There are two genera that bear the common name towhee. Out west there is a classic cline between California and Mexico of modestly plumaged birds in the genus Melozone.

Like so many bird species — e.g. flickers, orioles, meadowlarks — the towhee’s distribution stretches across the continent and its appearance varies from east to west. Systematists at the American Ornithological Union go back and forth about whether these taxa are two species or one. In 1995 they divided the rufous-sided towhee into the eastern and the spotted towhee (Piplio maculatus). The latter is found from the Mississippi River westward. The difference in appearance amounts to some bold white markings on the back and white wing bars. The voice of the western species is described as “harsher.”

Towhees are large sparrows, which is apparent from their conical beak and many of their habits, such as vigorously foraging in the duff beneath thick tangled shrubs. Their plumage, however, departs from the streaked gray, brown and white regimen of most sparrows. The eastern towhee has a black head, back, wings and tail, which is long and rounded at the end. There are white patches on the outer tail feathers and at the bases of the primaries. Its sides are indeed bright rufous and its belly is white. In the northeast the eyes are red, but in the southeast they are white, with a transition in frequency south to north.

Many people hear the bird’s call as “che-wink” and in the early 20th century birders like Margaret Morse Nice, routinely referred it by that name. When I heard the bird in my hedge, it was actually the first time I’d ever heard it as “toe-ee.” It was a softer call than usual more metallic one. It’s song is just as variable. Earlier this summer I listened to one sing from a gnarled pitch pine for at least 20 minutes. It usually sounds like “drink your tea,” but Sibley’s rendering of “jink denk teee” or Thoreau’s “hip you he-he-he-he” can also be discerned as the minutes wear on.

On Martha’s Vineyard, this bird is ubiquitous in the shrub oak heaths that dominate the center of the island. I used to bike from the south shore to the north to go to work and would pedal through the territories of one singing male after another. Each one had its own gloss on the song, a bit like the old joke about songs in the “folk tradition.”

Towhees are entertaining birds to watch. Many people are made aware of them by the ruckus they raise while they are looking for something to eat. They forage mostly on the ground, looking for seeds and insects in the leaf litter. While most sparrows scratch backward with both feet at once, the towhee alternates feet like a chicken and makes as much noise doing this as a much larger animal. While they are preoccupied with feeding, it is actually not difficult to get close, probably because they can’t hear you over the racket they’re making.

They nest mostly on the ground, and like many ground-nesters, will try to lure you away with a broken-wing display. According to the New Hampshire breeding bird atlas, look for them in “pine barrens, brushy areas of old pastures, power-line corridors, road edges, cutover areas, woods, clearings and abandoned gravel pits.” With agricultural areas increasingly reclaimed by forest or being covered with suburban sprawl, the towhee has become less common n New Hampshire. Nationwide is has declined by 49% since the 1960s, but the population is still 28 million.

Bill Chaisson, who has been a birdwatcher since age 11, is a former editor of the Eagle Times. He now works for the Town of Wilmot and lives in Sutton.