Skip to main content

Beak of the Week - Eastern Towhee

Eastern Towhee (Pipilo erythrophthalmus)
Family: Passerellidae

Some believe that this week’s Beak of the Week sounds like it’s singing “drink your tea.” The male Eastern Towhee has a black upper body, wings, rump and tail, two white tail spots, white belly, and rufous flanks. Female Eastern Towhees have brown upper bodies, rumps, wings, and tails instead of black ones, and lack tail spots. 
This handsome bird has recently been spotted in Chambers, Harris, and Galveston Counties. Eastern Towhees winter in East Texas. You will often find them hopping around on the ground, and in shrubs looking for arthropods, snails, seeds, fruits, and soft, new leaves and buds. These birds are very methodical when foraging for food. They take their time looking for food, will scrape at the leaf litter, hop backwards, and then rush in to snatch their prey. Because they forage in shrubs and leaf litter on the ground, Eastern Towhees prefer habitat with dense undergrowth, and plenty of leaves, such as forest edges, and abandoned fields. They can also be found in the Appalachian Mountains at elevations below 6,000 feet.

Eastern Towhees are known to be a rather antisocial species. Towhees will often threaten other towhees who venture too close. Males will flash their white tail spots to scare off other males from their territories. They are just as unwelcoming to females as they are to males, at least at first. Male Eastern Towhees take a few days to warm up to females, eventually becoming inseparable companions. As the sole nest builders, female Eastern Towhees will build their nests in leaf litter on the ground. Sometimes, however, they will build their nests in vine tangles a few feet off of the ground.

By Sarah Lefoley, Conservation Technician, Houston Audubon
📸 Photos by Greg Lavaty

---
Visit our Bird Gallery to read about other Texas birds!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

How to DIY a Dripper for birds

Are you running out of home projects to keep busy during the quarantine? Here’s one my hubby made for me that you can try: a DYI Dripper. I’ve long wanted a bird dripper to complement my yard’s wildlife habitat, and with spring migrants on the way, I was keen to provide a drip that will attract new birds that don’t visit feeders. I had a problem though. There is no water line or power source near my feeders. The idea of stringing a hose or wire across the driveway just isn’t practical. Enter the engineer. My husband thought about the location and the limitations for a bit, and came up with the concept of sourcing water for a dripper off the sprinkler system. By using a toilet tank that fills every time the sprinklers run, water can be constantly available for the drip. I nixed the idea of a toilet tank sitting in my yard though, so he made some aesthetic modifications by installing a toilet tank float inside a 5 gallon bucket hidden inside a custom wooden box with a handsome copper p

Beak of the Week - Yellow-crowned Night-Heron

Yellow-crowned Night-Heron ( Nyctanassa violacea ) Family: Ardeidae Our Beak of the Week is the official Bird of Houston , the Yellow-crowned Night-Heron! This seemingly hunch-backed bird can be a difficult one to spot. Both species of North American night-herons, yellow-crowned and black-crowned, forage mainly at night and spend most of the day hidden among branches near a body of water. These two birds can be differentiated easily by their plumage on and around their head. The most obvious difference is stated in their names: Yellow-crowned Night-Herons have a yellow crown and Black-crowned Night-Herons have a black crown. But that’s not the only difference! Yellow-crowned Night-Herons have a black head and face with a distinct thick white cheek stripe, whereas Black-crowned Night-Herons have a black head with gray on their face that extends down the whole front of the body. Yellow-crowned Night Herons also have a gray front and neck, but it contrasts greatly with their facial patter

Houston, we have an announcement. We’re now a Bird City!

We know that Houston is a vital city for birds, but now it’s official . Houston Audubon’s Conservation Team worked tirelessly in partnership with Houston Parks and Recreation Department (HPARD) Natural Resources Program to submit the application, and it paid off. Houston was honored as one of the first four cities to receive the Bird City Texas certification – an inaugural program by Audubon Texas and Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (TPWD). So, what exactly does being a Bird City mean? The big picture is that we have demonstrated that our community cares about birds, habitat, and conservation. The growing popularity of planting native plants, restoring prairies, bird-friendly education programs, and the Houston Lights Out for Birds program to reduce collisions for migrating birds were among the many efforts and programs that got us this designation. ( Go Houstonians! ) I personally witnessed the large amount of work that went into this application and was curious about