My interest in birds sparked when, as a small gleefully mud-smearing child, I left a running hose-end laying in the yard. Soon, American Robins had discovered the bounty of soaked clay, and began ferrying beak-fulls off to construct the sturdy walls of their nests. (Later, bits of sky-blue eggshells would appear mysteriously, taken from the hatching babies and dropped away from the nest by their parents.)
House Finch flocks swarmed from feeder to puddle and back again, taking chaotic communal baths.
Sparrows, warblers, and a tiny pygmy-owl sneaked out for a drink.
And as the puddle became a permanent bird-bath, the towhees came hopping.
Bigger than any local sparrow at 40 grams, with pumpkin-orange sides, crimson eyes on the adults, a ten-inch black-and-white wingspan, snowflake-dotted fan-like tail and loud cat-like meowing voice, the Spotted Towhee (Papilio maculatus) is inconspicuous, quiet, expert at sneaking — really rather hard to spot.
Rarely seen in the open, they congregate during fall migration on the edges of roads, tearing bites out of smashed acorns on the verges of the asphalt.
They like acorns and weeds and sun-baked dense brush— lots of it, thick enough to build nests and hide from hawks in. Himalayan blackberry will do. If you would like a towhee for a neighbor, they are common — but you’ll want to plant some native bushes, like mock orange (Philadelphus lewisii), ocean spray (Holodiscus discolor), or deer brush (Ceanothus integerrimus), and let the foliage reach the ground. They’ll need dead leaves and insects, so don’t spray anything, and they’ll appreciated any good berries you plant, like a native dogwood or rose.
And then stand near the brush patch and listen to the quiet “Sreee...” calls of foraging towhees watching you from some invisible vantage point, deep in the leaves. Wait — you want to actually see one? Good luck.
A good place to spot your first towhee is... anywhere with a lot of untended bushes. Residential areas of The Dalles, with lots of bird-feeders and thick lilacs, can be nice habitat.
They prefer to stay at ground level, unless it’s early on the spring morning, in which case you might find them high in a willow tree, bellowing their long loud trilling song. An individual towhee might return to spring after spring — the oldest recorded individual, a male, was at least 11 in 2010, when some scientists found it in California wearing an 11-year-old identifying band on its leg.
In dry country, if you’re patient and quiet and put some food on the ground or make a nice low puddle, they’ll come out for a snatch of black oil sunflower seeds, or a patch of smashed acorns in the road, or a sip of water.
The Dalles’ only common species, this bird was once lumped with Eastern Towhee, a more boring-looking bird (sorry) with only one white spot. We have several Spotted subspecies in the western U.S., with different amounts of snowflake-white decoration on their backs.
Cool fact: The Eastern Towhee’s white spot is the only white spot our towhees don’t have, a little patch at the “elbow” of their wing. If you see a Spotted Towhee with that, it’s a rare hybrid, but you probably won’t see one here as the nearest Eastern Twohee lives hundreds of miles away.
You can find more about Spotted Towhees by looking them up on Cornell Lab of Ornithology, for a start; or find a recording of their song on Macauley Library of Natural Sounds.
Perhaps my earliest sightings of towhees were the most magical. Seeing a towhee firsthand required a lot of patient, quiet waiting, until one emerged cautiously from a particular thick juniper bush, heading for The Puddle. It would approach the water slowly, with the two-footed hop that is a towhee’s only way of walking, submerge to the ankles, and thrash, throwing silver droplets overhead.
Each towhee was too cautious to take more than a few splashes at a time. Instead, they hopped a circular root through pond and brush, re-emerging few seconds for another cautious splash.
And sometimes they wouldn’t share the pond with anyone else, either. When the finches poured in to make merry chaos, they’d straighten their spindly legs, shake the droplets off, and melt back into the brush.
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