Want to become a birder but don't know how? Join me here every Friday--on Feathered Friday--where I'll post an online video featuring the bird of the week. Keep a running list of these birds to add to an Online Life List. Then when you identify the featured bird outside--in your yard, neighborhood, or park--add it to your actual Life List of birds seen or heard. "Collecting" birds is great fun, but more, you open your eyes and ears to a whole new world of beauty and song!
Years ago I learned the name of this bird as the Rufous-sided Towhee. But sometime since, not exactly sure when, this species got a name change to the Eastern Towhee. A member of the Family Emberizidae, "Towhees are a kind of large sparrow" (Cornell Lab of Ornithology, All About Birds).
If you're new to birding, you'll find grouping a species within its larger family or other category helpful. For instance, you might identify an unknown bird as a sparrow, even if you don't know the particular sparrow. Or another as a wren, or finch, or blackbird, or flycatcher. You get the idea. Learning the characteristics of the larger group helps you exclude all the groups to which the bird doesn't belong. But more on this later. For now enjoy the signature song--Drink your tee-ee-ee! of the Eastern Towhee.
Four weeks ago we began our Online Life List with a member of the thrush family (Turdidae) . . .
1) The American Robin (Turdidae)
2) Eastern Bluebird (also in the thrush family)
3) American Cardinal (Cardinalidae), and today's . . .
4) Eastern Towhee (Family Emberizidae)
Remember. After viewing the video, you can add the Eastern Towhee to your Online Life List, but your true goal is to find these birds out in the world to add to your Life List of birds personally seen or heard by you.
Till next time . . . Keep birds in your heart!
Georgia Anne
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