Looked at a towhee in our backyard this morning and were extremely surprised to see it was a first year female Spotted Towhee. We do a lot of ground feeding and the yard was covered with more than 60 juncos plus a lot of white-throateds and a few Fox Sparrows. Not to count all the other normal birds around. Overall there were probably better that 125 birds in the yard at once and that tends to attract unusual birds. In past years it has been times like this that we have seen swamp, clay-colored and other sparrows that we do not have the correct habitat for.
We are presuming this was a first year bird as the gray-brown head color described in Sibley was interspersed with light brownish streaking. The back spotting and the dual wing bars were also a light tan color and not the clear white color shown in several field guides. We were able to get quite a few photos but as many of you know we use film and not digital so do not know yet if they will come out. We would appreciate comments from others who have experience with first year Spotted Towhees if we are interpreting the tan color as first year as this was new for us. Also of interest was a junco showing some of the marks of a Pink-sided Junco, a subspecies of the Dark-eyed Junco. This bird was not pure as it had marks of both the normal slate-colored race and the pink-sided. Dennis and Barbara Martin [email protected]
