Green-tailed Towhee

The Green-tailed Towhee is the smallest and most distinctively colored of the towhee group, with an olive-green wash across the back, wings, and tail that gives the species its name, set off by a neat rufous-red cap and a crisp white throat bordered by a dark whisker mark. The face is gray, and the underparts are pale gray fading to white on the belly.

The combination of green upperparts, a rusty cap, and a white throat makes this an unusually colorful towhee compared to its plainer relatives, though it remains a shy, ground-dwelling bird typically encountered low in shrubby cover.

Key field marks

• Olive-green wash across the back, wings, and tail
• Bright rufous cap
• Crisp white throat outlined by a dark malar (whisker) stripe
• Gray face and breast fading to a whitish belly

Similar species

• No other North American sparrow or towhee combines an olive-green back with a rufous cap and white throat, making this species relatively easy to distinguish once seen well.
• At a quick glance in poor light it might suggest a female Spotted Towhee, but the green tones and white throat are distinctive with a clear view.

Green-tailed Towhees breed across the mountainous interior West, from eastern Oregon and Idaho south through the Great Basin, Rocky Mountains, and Sierra Nevada into the mountains of the Southwest, favoring dense sagebrush, mountain chaparral, and shrubby slopes, often at fairly high elevation.

The species is migratory, wintering in the desert Southwest and Mexico in similar brushy habitats at lower elevations, and generally arrives on breeding grounds later in spring and departs earlier in fall than many other western songbirds.

Green-tailed Towhees are shy and often stay low and hidden in dense shrubs, foraging on the ground with a scratching, kicking motion similar to other towhees, though they can be somewhat more furtive and harder to see well.

The song is a variable, rich mix of clear notes, buzzy trills, and slurred phrases, often likened to a fox sparrow's musical quality, while the call is a distinctive catlike "mew." Diet includes insects, seeds, and berries gathered from the ground and low vegetation. Nests are built low in dense shrubs, often sagebrush, with typical clutches of three to five eggs.