#rufous-sided towhee

[whatnext10]

An Interspecies Interaction Can be Quite Interesting

Towhee and Cardinal I hadn’t seen either one of the towhees (Pipilo erythrophthalmus) in a couple of weeks, so needless to say, I was really pleased to see the female show up at the feeding station on Monday. As usual, she was kind of shy, but once she started eating, she seemed really hungry. She hadn’t been eating for very long before Poppa cardinal (Cardinalis cardinalis) showed up, and he…

[na-bird-of-the-day]

BOTD: Spotted Towhee

Photo: Becky Matsubara

"A widespread towhee of the West, sometimes abundant in chaparral and on brushy mountain slopes. For many years it was considered to belong to the same species as the unspotted Eastern Towhees found east of the Great Plains, under the name of Rufous-sided Towhee. The Spotted Towhee differs in the heavy white spotting on its upperparts, and its songs and callnotes are more variable and much harsher in tone. It often is first noticed because of the sound of its industrious scratching in the leaf-litter under dense thickets."

- Audubon Field Guide

[valentinsylve]

Alert! Rufous-sided (Eastern) towhee seen in my yard!

[alphonsewilliams]

Rufous-Sided Towhee.

[geopsych]

I wish this were less fuzzy but the light wasn’t great: rufous-sided towhee. I had a quick walk in the woods this morning looking for hermit thrushes (no luck) and these friends, and saw neither. But after I was home for a while I looked out at the bird bath and saw this handsome fellow. Hurray! I also saw a brown thrasher on my walk. The birds that flew south are filing in and adding their voices to the spring chorus. Welcome back!

[tetramodal]

Spotted Towhee Acrylic on canvas 8x8".
 Charles Morgenstern, 2022.
 Garden of the Gods, Colorado Springs, Colorado.

[lilbit-of-kizzy]

Birds in the snow!! Apparently snow time is peace time because every bird was there and no one was fighting over the feeders or chasing anyone away :3

I wish I could've gotten better shots but everytime I got too close to the door they'd fly off 😅

Of course their ever present guardian was patient enough to wait for them to come back :3 (she loves birds! She'd be happy to sit and watch them all day!)

In order of appearance:

Sparrows, Gold Finch, Cardinals (male and female), Mourning Dove, Rufous-Sided Towhee, Juncos, Chickadee, Squirrel (lol), Tufted Titmouse (I'm pretty sure it's in there somewhere), Bluejay, and Border Collie!

(oh and that thing in the bird bath is a defroster! The Chickadee was the only one brave enough to take a sip!)

[inthecityofgoodabode]

January 2023: Rainy Monday Wasteland Walk

Where to ford: 

To the left: 

To the right... I forded here: 

The banana plant at The Oasis had collapsed due to last week’s freezing temperatures: 

This line of trees is a buffer against noise from the highway on the other side. It’s also bird habitat: 

A couple of grainy photos of a male Rufous-sided Towhee. 

I spotted about 5 males altogether. They were all very elusive: 

[oceanodroma-blog1]

My favourite terrifying looking little bird, the Spotted Towhee

Burnaby Lake, BC

[silverlistenstothings]

:D

8,18,or 50 Scam/Jodie

Come join me in scam/Jodie hell, you’ve not written enough for them <3

You, dear ‘stranger’, are certainly aware of how much this one got away from me. Posted separately from the rest of my touch prompt stuff because it’s a whole thing, with a plot and everything

[wexlermendelssohn]

How do I get a towhee to stop attacking my front window?

So far all I’ve tried is:

Blinds open versus blinds closed

Putting a suet box away from the window to distract the bird

The towhee has been in the magnolia tree for at least a couple weeks but only recently started his fight with my window

[whatnext10]

The Most Beautiful Bird on the Place is the Towhee

More Than Handsome Over the past few months, I’ve been lucky enough to have quite a variety of birds hanging around in my yard. There have been several interesting winter time visitors, like the oven bird, and some who are migrating through like the house wren. There are also quite a few who have taken up residence and by far the most handsome of them is the Eastern towhee (Pipilo…

[myadventurecat]

Garden of the Gods, Colorado Springs, Colorado. May 2017.

A National Natural Landmark full of beautiful trails and opportunities for birding and wildlife viewing. Pictured (in order): rufous-sided towhee, rock pigeons in flight, western scrub jay, and (a personal favorite while out west) a magpie. Also pictured is a single mountain lion track, an exciting find for us - and one we may not have spotted if not for the kind hiker who gave us directions to it. I could have sworn while passing him that he was my favorite hiking youtuber, but even though I ended up being mistaken, I was still very glad to have spoken to him.

[tototavros]

does it make sense to say that x is a real thing, if x is a label that has since been discarded but is still in common casual use?

e.g., i was just about to post "infrequent reminder that the rufous sided towhee is a real thing and not actually made up" but apparently what i was thinking was a rufous sided towhee was in fact the eastern towhee

[uwmspeccoll]

A Towhee Feathursday

This week we present a few of those long-tailed sparrows, the Towhees!! These little beauties can be a bit shy, so they are often difficult to spot, but when you do, what a pleasure! Once again, these images are from Rex Brasher’s massive, limited-edition, 12-volume set Birds and Trees of North America, self-published in Kent, Connecticut, between 1929 and 1932, containing thousands of hand-colored reproductions of Brasher’s paintings.

These New World Passerines fall into two genera: Melozone and Pipilo, and we are showing specimens from both. From top to bottom, they are:

Spotted Towhee (Pipilo maculatus): detail and full print -- This rufous-sided, speckled-wing towhee resides mainly west of the Mississippi River.

California Towhee (Melozone crissalis): full print only -- As the name indicates, this towhee ranges from northern California to the tip of the Baja peninsula.

Canyon Towhee (Melozone fusca): detail and full print -- The range of this towhee is adjacent to the California Towhee, and there is still some dispute whether the two are just subspecies of the same bird.

Abert's Towhee (Melozone aberti): full print only -- This little guy has a very narrow distribution mainly around the lower Colorado River and Gila River watersheds.

Green-tailed Towhee (Pipilo chlorurus): full print only -- The Green-tailed is just that, green-tailed, and is the smallest of the towhees. Its range covers most of the interior Western United States, with a winter range in Mexico and the southern edge of the Southwestern United States.

Eastern Towhee (Pipilo erythrophthalmus): detail and full print -- This is the towhee we get to see here in Wisconsin, a very lovely bird! Its range covers much of the U.S, and parts of southeastern Canada, east of the Mississippi.

Find out more about Rex Brasher’s work, and/or view other posts from this set.

View more Feathursday posts

[anonsally]

Mother’s Day hike (and Global Big Day birdwatching)

Today Wife and I took an easy hike with my parents. After a bit of a mishap with meeting up (it turned out the park had two completely different entrances!), we had a lovely walk. Among the interesting sightings:

A dramatic hummingbird courtship display! (@lies, Is the Anna’s hummingbird the only one that does the flying up really high and then diving, swooping up out of the dive with a “peep!” and then hovering a little higher from the bottoming-out point of the dive, before repeating?)

A tiny bunny!

A lizard on a branch! (usually they are sunning themselves on rocks)

A wrentit (well, this wasn’t a sighting but a hearing; my dad recognised it)

A possible rufous-crowned sparrow? It definitely had a rufous crown, a plain grey front, and black mustache markings down the sides of the throat, and I definitely instinctively thought “sparrow” when I saw it, and it didn’t look like the photos of the other sparrows in the app, but Merlin says it is rare... 

various wildflowers

A spotted towhee

This wasn’t a birdwatching walk, so I wasn’t keeping track on eBird, but I might report them later if I get confident enough about the sparrow.

For yesterday’s Global Big Day, I met up with a couple of friends by the mud flats and we had a nice bird walk for about an hour and a half, spotting 17 different species, though we couldn’t tell if the ducks were greater or lesser scaups. Our favorite sightings were:

American avocets

semipalmated plovers

marbled godwits

snowy egrets

a black phoebe

a pair of red-winged blackbirds