Green-tailed Towhee

                                            Green-tailed Towhee   [Marbeth Wilson Photo]

A Green-tailed Towhee was found in Sackville on the Christmas Bird Count on 17 December, 2022.  What an amazing species to find in our region and what a stroke of luck for the 3 birders who found it!  This species occasionally strays away from its tight home range but they usually only make it to the central US and occasionally to the east coast from southern Maine to North Carolina.  Sometimes they stray to the Great Lakes region.  This record represents only the second time it has been found in New Brunswick.  The previous was seen in Saint John in 2002 where it frequented a feeder area from January to mid-March.   I saw it when it was first found on 11 January.  

The Green-tailed Towhee (Pipilo chlorurus) is a member of the Passerellidae family (American sparrows).    The 'Pipilo' is the name for the towhees and the 'chlorurus' identifies it as the Green-tailed Towhee.  The full scientific name means 'colourful chirper'.  This species was first described in 1839 by John James Audubon when he called it Fringilla chlorura.  It has had 4 name changes since then.    

                                        Green-tailed Towhee  [Marbeth Wilson Photo]

The Green-tailed Towhee is the smallest of the towhees of which we have 9 species.  These are large chesty sparrows with rather long rounded tails.  Towhees are ground feeders and their flight is generally low to the ground and is several quick flaps followed by a short, flat-winged glide.  Towhees usually show no sexual dimorphism which is the case in this species.  The Green-tailed Towhee is the only entirely migratory towhee.

The Green-tailed Towhee is 15.7 to 18.0 cm long with the male being slightly larger than the female.  Generally it looks like a large sparrow with a rusty cap, whitish throat, black malar stripe, and a greenish back and tail.  More specifically the head shows a rusty crown; forehead, lores, and malar stripe gray to dark gray; supraloral and submoustachial stripes and chin and throat white; face gray or greenish-grey; nape, mantle and rump greenish-grey or greenish-brown; tail greenish tinged with yellow-olive; wing greenish olive with a yellow bend in the carpal edge.  For the underparts, the chin and throat are white; bill is black but the base of the lower mandible can be white or bluish-white; legs and feet dull brown or grayish; iris dark reddish brown.  Females are like the males but can be just slightly duller.

The first winter bird resembles the adult but with a duller crown.  The juvenile is heavily streaked with dark brown and with a white throat with contrasting dark brown malar stripe.  The tail and wings show a greenish cast.  

The range on the Green-tailed Towhee is mostly the western and south-western US and Mexico.  It breeds from south-central Oregon, south-eastern Washington, southern Idaho, south-central Montana, Wyoming and sometimes South Dakota south through California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico east to central and western Colorado, Oklahoma and Texas.  It winters in the southern parts of California, Arizona and New Mexico southward as far as central Mexico.  Preferred habitats include dry shrubby hillsides with low brush interspersed with trees and chaparral up to 2400 metres elevation.  It likes sage brush and open piñon-juniper.  In winter it prefers low weedy brush and dry gullies with mesquite.  

Green-tailed Towhees are secretive birds like most towhees.  They prefer to stay hidden in low thick vegetation.  When disturbed they will fly low away or drop to the ground and run away looking like a mouse.  In breeding season the male will show himself while he sings from the top of a shrub.  The song starts with short introductory notes followed by trills.  It can be described as a warbled 'wheeet clur cheeweee-churr'  or sometimes it is a rapid wheezy sound.  On listening to the play-back I could hear something similar to the 'tow hee' of the Eastern Towhee.  The call note is a 'keek' sound or sometimes the bird makes a cat-like mewing sound.  

Green-tailed Towhees nest on the ground or in low shrubs usually lower than 3 feet above ground.  The nest is a large loose cup made of twigs, grasses, weeds, bark strips and lined with fine grasses, rootlets and animal hair.  Three to four eggs are laid and are white with heavy brown to gray dotting on the large end.  The female incubates the eggs 11 to 13 days.  Green-tailed Towhees eat mainly insects and seeds.  They will sometimes feed on berries and small fruits.  They forage on the ground under thick vegetation where they scratch in the leaf litter often doing a 2-legged scratch.  In their normally dry habitat they drink morning dew from the leaves.  They will come to feeders but typically feed on the ground under the feeding tray.

Similar species do not occur here so one would have no trouble identifying this species (assuming a good knowledge of the field guides).  In its native habitat a similar species is the Olive Sparrow but it is smaller and has a brown-striped crown.  

Green-tailed Towhee populations have declined somewhat probably because of the conversion of their favourite mesquite habitat into agriculture lands.  It does like burned-over land so our drier climate might favour this species.  Presently in most of its range its population remains relatively stable.  

A group of towhees is termed a 'teapot'.  We would have to go to Arizona to see a teapot of Green-tailed Towhees but it is awfully nice to be able to see one here in NB today.  

White-eyed Vireo

 

                                                White-eyed Vireo  [Jim Carroll Photo]

The White-eyed Vireo is a very rare spring and fall visitor to New Brunswick.  Our first record was an immature bird banded at Kent Island in September, 1980.  It has been seen nearly every year since then with most sightings being near the coast lines, the Grand Manan archipelago, St. Andrews, Saint John, Miscou, etc.  The adult bird shown above was seen in the Lorneville area in October, 2022.  

Vireos are members of the Vireonidae family.  There are 15 members of this family all in the genus, Vireo.    Here in NB we normally have 5 species; Yellow-throated, Blue-headed, Red-eyed, Warbling and Philadelphia Vireos.  Vireos grace our spring, summer and fall landscape with their song and plumage.  They are important members of our ecosystems. 

The White-eyed Vireo (Vireo griseus) is a small active grayish-yellow bird that can often be mistaken for a warbler or a kinglet.  But close examination or the song can quickly identify this species.  It is 13 cm long and likes to stay hidden in thick bushes.  It often announces its presence by its explosive song.  That is the way I found my first White-eyed Vireo.  I was in South Carolina where it sometimes winters and there was this loud very unusual sound (noise?) coming from a thick small bush.  I tried unsuccessfully 2 or 3 times to see what it was and could not see that bird (at least I thought it was a bird!).  I started to give up but then stubbornly went back to find out what it was.  With more searching and crawling around on my knees the bird finally popped out and much to my surprise I was looking at a White-eyed Vireo.  I was delighted to find a new bird and to have it behave exactly as the literature describes it; secretive, explosive loud song, white eye.

                                                        White-eyed Vireo  [Internet Photo]

The breeding range of the White-eyed Vireo is the south-eastern US extending to the area south of the Great Lakes and  eastward to Pennsylvania and Massachusetts.  It winters in the southern-most part of its range and in Mexico, and the Caribbean.  Vagrants are found to the west and to the Maritime Provinces.  

The White-eyed Vireo often announces its presence with explosive song.  This hasn't been the case of the ones I have seen in the alder bushes near Lorneville probably because it was beyond the breeding season.   They popped out to see who was present but were quiet.  This species has a bold facial pattern with yellow spectacles and a white iris.  Examining photos of this species, the iris can be white, light gray or slightly yellowish.  The plumage is grayish-olive above, shows a gray back and two white wing bars.  The bird is white below with grayish on the throat and yellowish on the sides.  The bill is dark in colour and noticeably bigger and thicker than a warbler's bill.  The young of this species looks similar to the adult but has a brown or gray iris into the late fall.

The voice of this species is distinctive.  The bird is often heard before it is seen.  The song is loud, explosive and is described as wren-like.  I wound describe it as very varied and full of squeaks, 'chicks', and many other weird sounds.  The actual mating song begins and ends with 'chick'.  In fact, in Bermuda where it is common, the bird is known as the 'chick of the village' which is the people's interpretation of its song.  One thing is for sure, this species does not sound like any of our native species.

 The White-eyed Vireo builds its nest in thick tangled vegetation usually low to the ground.  It is usually built in the fork of a sapling and is anchored with strands taken from spider webs.  Both adults build the nest which is made of twigs, rootlets, strips of bark, grass, leaves, plant down, lichens, moss and bits of wasp nests.  They clearly are good engineers, using all materials at their disposal.  The nest is cup-shaped and is lined with fine grass and plant fibres.  The male serenades the sitting female incessantly from early spring to fall, just like our native vireos.  Four white eggs speckled with brown or black are laid and incubated by both adults for 13 to 15 days.  The young fledge in 9 to 11 days.  This species raises one brood in the northern part of its range and two in the southern part.  

This species is an insectivore with a varied diet.  It eats insects of many kinds and berries including caterpillars, moths, butterflies, beetles, ants, wasps, bees, grasshoppers, spiders, snails and sometimes small lizards.  It eats almost entirely insects in the breeding season.  During migration and in the winter it will eat berries and small fruits.

There have been slight declines in the White-eyed Vireo population since the 1960s.  Habitat loss has undoubtedly played a part.  The species is also susceptible to cowbird parasitism.  An interesting fact about the White-eyed Vireo is that it is one of only two perching birds in the US with white eyes.  The other is the Wrentit which is found in the western US.  

The White-eyed Vireo is also famous in archeology.  An approximately 400,000-year-old wing bone from a White-eyed Vireo is the only fossil record of any Vireo in North America.  So, the White-eyed Vireo has been around for a long time!