Songs
The classic Eastern Towhee song, given by males, is a loud drink-your-tea! lasting about 1 second. The first note (drink) is sharp and metallic, and the final note (tea) is a musical trill. Sometimes the song will start with more than one drink.
Calls
- Song, calls
Recorded by Geoffrey A. Keller
- Call
Recorded by Wilbur L. Hershberger
West Virginia April 2001
- Males calling in a territorial dispute
Recorded by Wilbur L. Hershberger
Maryland July 2000
Courtesy of Macaulay Library
© Cornell Lab of Ornithology.
The most common call is a two-parted, rising chewink, tow-hee, or joree, made by both sexes, often as an alarm call. This call can vary in tone geographically from clear whistles to hoarse or nasal sounds. Towhees make several other calls, including a high-pitched, quiet, lisping call for staying in contact, and a sharp tic when mobbing or fleeing predators.
Backyard Tips
Eastern Towhees are likely to visit – or perhaps live in – your yard if you’ve got brushy, shrubby, or overgrown borders. If your feeders are near a vegetated edge, towhees may venture out to eat fallen seed.
Find This Bird
Walk slowly along the edges of forests, thickets, and old fields. Listen carefully for the Eastern Towhee’s scratchy chewink call, its bright song, or simply any rustling the bird makes in dry leaves. Then lower your eyes to ground level and scan the leaf litter, looking for a scratching towhee or the bright white corners of the bird flashing its tail at you.
Get Involved
Watch for Eastern Towhees foraging for fallen seeds under your bird feeders – then send us your observations as part of Project FeederWatch
Learn more about bird photography in our Building Skills section. Then contribute your images to the Birdshare flickr site, which helps supply the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's websites with photos, including All About Birds.
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Eastern Towhee from Bent's Life Histories of North American Birds (1968)
Find in-depth information on Eastern Towhees and other hundreds of other birds for as little as $5 in The Birds of North America Online from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and American Ornithologists' Union