Drink Your Tea?

(Spotted Towhee)

Growing up, we called this guy a Rufous-sided Towhee. Good name. Very descriptive and you can’t miss those beautifully colored patches. Today, if you’re in the east, you call it an Eastern Towhee. In the west, it’s known as the Spotted Towhee. If there’s a difference, it takes a better eye than mine to spot it, but they are separate species.

These cousins behave very similarly, that is, they do their very best to hide from you or other perceived dangers. They spend their time either deep among shadowed branches or on the ground under dense shrubby cover. In the trees, they’re looking for beetles and spiders to snack on, especially during breeding season. They pursue those same critters when on the ground, scratching with those long toes and claws and agilely hopping to pounce on anything they scare up. In the non-breeding seasons, their diets tend more to vegetarian tastes: berries, buds, and even acorns.

I was proud in my teens to identify the Eastern Towhees by their song, an almost bell-like, multi-syllabic version of “Drink your tea,” with that last syllable held high and long to bounce like a stuttered “eee-eee-eee.” So clear was the song in my memory, I was puzzled and disappointed to learn that the Spotted Towhee version lost that charming call, perhaps somewhere on their journey west long ago.