Eastern Towhee

The Eastern Towhee is a large, boldly patterned member of the sparrow family, with males showing a solid black hood, back, and tail contrasting sharply against warm rufous-orange flanks and a clean white belly. Females share the same pattern but with rich brown replacing the male's black.

Both sexes have striking red eyes (in most of the range), white spots and edges in the wings and tail visible especially in flight, and a heavy, conical seed-eating bill. The overall effect is one of the most striking and easily learned birds of eastern thickets.

Key field marks

• Male: black hood, back, and tail; female: same pattern in rich brown
• Bright rufous-orange flanks and clean white belly in both sexes
• Red eyes (western Florida birds show pale/white eyes)
• White corners on the tail and white wing spots, conspicuous in flight

Similar species

• Spotted Towhee, its western counterpart, is very similar but shows bold white spotting on the black back and wings; the two forms were once considered a single species and hybridize in a narrow zone on the Great Plains.
• No other eastern songbird shares this black-rufous-white combination.

Eastern Towhees are found across the eastern United States, from southern Canada to Florida and west to the edge of the Great Plains, in dense shrubby thickets, forest edges, overgrown fields, and areas with a thick understory. They avoid open habitats and closed-canopy forest interiors alike, favoring the tangled edge zones in between.

Northern populations migrate south for winter, while birds in the southeastern US, including a distinctive white-eyed Florida population, are largely resident year-round.

Eastern Towhees forage almost entirely on or near the ground, using a distinctive noisy double-scratch (kicking backward with both feet at once) to clear leaf litter and expose hidden insects and seeds, a behavior that often gives away their presence in dense cover well before they are seen.

The song is commonly rendered as "drink-your-teeeea," with a clear introductory note or two followed by a musical trill; the call is a distinctive, rising "chewink" or "tow-hee," from which the group's name derives. Diet includes insects, seeds, and berries, foraged mostly from the ground and low vegetation. Nests are built on or near the ground in dense cover, with typical clutches of two to six eggs, and pairs often raise multiple broods per season.