Like a barnyard chicken or a miniature wild turkey, the little black bird scraped away at the leaves, using one foot at a time to reveal a seed or bug on the woodland floor, then employing both feet ...

Characteristics: A sparrow-sized bird, this towhee has a black head, red eye and the males have a black back with white spots, hence the common name. Females are browner instead of black. The ...

The rufous-sided towhee, with its striking plumage, is a somewhat secretive member of the finch family that flits from beneath vegetation to visit feeders or scratch around in garden litter.

Although bird identification can be perplexing — baffling at times — for even the most accomplished birders, the principles of identification are relatively simple. We recognize birds by their visual ...

Often missed by birders, particularly those of us who hear poorly, is one of our most attractive species — the eastern towhee. Until 1995, it was called the rufous-sided towhee, a very descriptive ...

McEnroe's first rufous-sided towhee in full frolic, while keeping an eye out for Caster Don and his all-weather mower. It's a new one for Steve McEnroe and his life list of birds. The towhee was a ...

A selection of bird essays by renowned ornithologist and artist George Miksch Sutton (1898-1982), founder of the Avian Research Center in Norman, Okla., was posthumously published in 1986 as “Birds ...

CHICO — A Rufous-sided Towhee visited my yard. Or at least I think that’s what it was.? The first time the bird appeared, I grabbed an Audubon field guide for identification.?The trouble with those ...

A male eastern towhee is quite dashing in appearance. Black above, white below and a lovely cinnamon-brown on the flanks give this bird the look of a tuxedoed gentleman on his way to some high-society ...

Claim to fame: When males are in bright courtship plumage in spring, the Eastern towhee is one of the more interestingly marked birds you’ll see at forest edges and in old overgrown fields throughout ...