Date: April 28, 2020 7:45 am
Location: Jonesborough, Tennessee - Home
GPS Co-ordinates: 36.339781, -82.509418
Habitat: Scrubby areas and forest areas with thickets
Weather/Conditions: Cloudy and cold 45F
First Sighting: Today
Bird’s Actions: Sitting in a dogwood tree.
Bird’s Appearance: Large sparrow, white in wing is limited to one small patch at the base of the primaries.
My Actions: Photograph, observe and admire.
Remarks: I took this photo through a screened window, under cloudy conditions, made even darker by the shadows from the tree. Hopefully I will get a better photo soon.
Eastern Towhees tend to be pretty solitary and they use a number of threat displays to tell other towhees they are not welcome. You may see contentious males lift, spread, or droop one or both wings, fan their tails, or flick their tails to show off the white spots at the corners. studies have shown that male towhees tend to defend territories many times larger than needed suply to provide food.
Frequently they become the victim of the parasitic Brown Headed Cowbird. Female Cowbirds lay their eggs in Towhee nests, then leave the birds to rais their Cowbird chicks. In some areas Cowbirds lay eggs in more than half of all Towhee nests. Female Cowbirds will often remove one of the existing eggs in the nest making the swap harder to notice. Towhees, unlike some other birds show no ability to recognize or remove the imposter’s eggs.