An Elusive Vagrant Spotted Towhee

The Christmas Count is a census of birds done around the end of each year by birders throughout the continent. The first one, 99 years ago, was conducted on Christmas Day, but hardly any are done on that day now. The National Audubon Society allows a three-weekend window in which to do the census, so an enthusiastic field birder can participate in more than one count.

Last week you heard about the Springfield area count held on Saturday, December 18. Here in western Massachusetts, counts were made in the Athol and Williamstown area that day as well. The next day, on Sunday, two more were done in the Northampton and Pittsfield area.

The Northampton area count has by far the most participants, and not only because it has the largest concentration of people interested in outdoor recreation and birds. The mix of wildlife habitats in central Hampshire County happens to be the richest and most varied in the entire region.

The rarest species of the record high 91 recorded on the Northampton area count was a spotted towhee. Many people are familiar with the eastern towhee, which sometimes comes to feeders in spring and fall. These feeder visitors are likely migrating birds, dropping in to unfamiliar territory and taking food wherever they can.

The eastern towhee breeds widely in our region, but only in oak scrub lands or in heavily cut oak forests, where trees are small and the underbrush is thick. They are very like sparrows in their appearance and behavior, staying on or close to the ground where they rummage among the leaves searching for seeds and insects.

Not long ago, the ornithologists who study these things lumped the two species of towhees into one and called it the rufous-sided towhee. Twenty years later, they reconsidered and split them apart again. Further research revealed that they hardly ever interbred in the narrow regions where they both occur, one of the tests of determining whether two similar species are actually separate.

The spotted towhee is present only in the western continent from southern Canada to Central America. The eastern towhee is restricted to the East from the Atlantic coast to the Great Plains. When cold weather comes, the towhee, like most sparrows, retreats from the northern part of its range, seeking areas with less snow cover. Only a handful are found in New England in the winter.

On the morning of Christmas Eve, a few of us went to Hadley and found the place where the spotted towhee was found. Two to three hours of searching the brushy embankments near the Connecticut River proved fruitless. This towhee stayed hidden.

On the Sunday after Christmas, the Westfield area count was held. Late in the morning, my party of three counters was checking out a birdy section of brush along a large meadow behind some houses. After much enticing with alarm sounds and owl calls, an eastern towhee suddenly appeared.

It sat quietly in a bush for two minutes, then dived back down into hiding. We were excited by this rare winter sight despite the fact it had only one white spot on its wings. It lacked the heavy white smudges on its back that would have made it the even rarer spotted species.

The towhee is one of the few sparrow-type birds in which the sexes are dimorphic, with the males and females having distinctly different plumage. This was a male with a jet-black hood and upper back. The female would have been dark brown in this area. The belly is pure white, but the sides are rufous like the color of a robin's breast. It is a strikingly handsome bird.

The only other story about this count period is that the numbers of regular wintering birds found is very low. One reason might be that some birds are dispersed and scattered away from the usual feeding areas due to the mild and snowless winter. However, there are definitely fewer golden-crowned kinglets and red-breasted nuthatches. Also, of the northern finches that passed through earlier in the fall, only the common redpoll has remained, though in small numbers.

I will try for that other spotted towhee again, but even if it remains hidden, this year-end season will be known as the time of the towhee.