Eastern Towhee
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Eastern Towhee | ||||||||||||||
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Male Eastern Towhee.
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Pipilo erythrophthalmus (Linnaeus, 1758) |
The Eastern Towhee, Pipilo erythrophthalmus, is a large sparrow. The taxonomy of the towhees has been under debate in recent decades, and formerly this bird and the Spotted Towhee were considered a single species, the Rufous-sided Towhee.
Adults have rufous sides, a white belly and a long dark tail with white edges. The eyes are red, white for birds in the southeast. Males have a dark head, upper body and tail; these parts are brown in the female.
Their breeding habitat is brushy areas across eastern North America. They nest either low in bushes or on the ground under shrubs.
Northern birds migrate to the southern United States.
There has been one record of this species as a vagrant to western Europe; a single bird in Great Britain in 1966.
These birds forage on the ground or in low vegetation. They mainly eat insects, acorns, seeds and berries.
The call is Drink your teeeee; the word "towhee" imitates this call.
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[edit] References
- BirdLife International (2004). Pipilo erythrophthalmus. 2006 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. IUCN 2006. Retrieved on 12 May 2006. Database entry includes justification for why this species is of least concern.
[edit] External links
- Eastern Towhee Species Account - Cornell Lab of Ornithology
- Eastern Towhee Information and Photos - South Dakota Birds and Birding
- Eastern Towhee - Pipilo erythropthalmus - USGS Patuxent Bird Identification InfoCenter
- Eastern Towhee videos on the Internet Bird Collection
- Stamps (for United States) with RangeMap
- Eastern Towhee photo gallery VIREO
[edit] Further reading
[edit] Book
- Greenlaw, J. S. 1996. Eastern Towhee (Pipilo erythrophthalmus). In The Birds of North America, No. 262 (A. Poole and F. Gill, eds.). The Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia, PA, and The American Ornithologists’ Union, Washington, D.C.
- Khanna, Hitesh. (). Comparing degradation in the Eastern towhee's (Pipilo erythrophthalmus) song introduction and trill. In Advances in Ethology. Taborsky, M. [Editor], Taborsky, B. [Editor]. Advances in Ethology; Contributions to the XXV International Ethological Conference. 1997. 117. Series Information: Advances in Ethology. Vol. 32.
[edit] Thesis
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