Eastern Towhee: the bird you have to build cover for

The short answer

• Cover decides whether you get one. An Eastern Towhee feeds within a few feet of dense brush and will not cross an open lawn to reach a feeder.
• It forages by double-scratching, a two-footed backward kick through leaf litter, so it needs something loose to work rather than a swept tray.
• No single food stands out. Black oil sunflower, sunflower hearts, millet and cracked corn are all taken readily, which means placement matters far more than seed choice here.
• The song is a whistled drink-your-teeeea and the common call a rising chewink. You will hear one long before you see it.
• Red eyes in most of the range, but birds in Florida and southern Georgia have white or straw-colored eyes, which is normal and not a different species.

Seed will not buy you a towhee. An Eastern Towhee is a shrubland bird that happens to eat seed, and whether one comes into your yard is settled by what the boundary looks like rather than by what is in the bag.

Start with the brush pile, not the seed#

A towhee lives in the layer between about 6 in and 4 ft off the ground: scrub, hedge bottoms, regrowth, bramble, the tangled edge where a wood meets a field. It feeds under that layer and retreats into it constantly. A neat lawn with a pole in the middle of it offers nothing this bird can use, however good the food is. The fix is a brush pile, and the dimensions matter.

• Size. Roughly 6 to 8 ft across and 3 to 4 ft high. Smaller than that and there is no interior space; a towhee wants to be inside the pile, not on top of it.
• Build. Coarse limbs 2 to 4 in thick on the bottom, crossed to leave gaps, then progressively finer brush on top. Discarded Christmas trees are ideal for the upper layers.
• Position. At the edge of the yard, against a hedge, fence line or wood edge, so the bird can reach it without crossing open ground.
• Distance to the food. Put the feeding patch within about 6 ft of the pile. Our working threshold is 10 ft: beyond that, use drops off sharply, and past about 20 ft of open lawn most towhees will not come at all.
• Refresh. A pile settles and rots. Add a layer each year, rebuild every three or four.

Native plants and cover covers the permanent version of this, which is a shrub layer along one boundary. The brush pile is what you do in the meantime, and it works in weeks rather than years.

Two feet, one backward kick#

The bird hops forward, kicks both feet backwards at the same instant, hauls a layer of leaves behind it, then looks down at what it has uncovered. White-throated Sparrows do the same thing, but a towhee weighs about 40 g against their 26 g and the result is much louder. On a still autumn day you can hear one working leaf litter from 30 ft away, which is usually how you find out you have one.

That behavior is your setup instruction.

• Leave a leaf layer 2 to 3 in deep under the shrubs at the yard edge and scatter seed into it.
• If you must use a tray, put an inch of dry leaves or coarse wood chip in it so there is something to move. A swept surface gives this bird nothing to do.
• Never rake the yard edge bare in autumn. That litter is the whole habitat.

Drink your teeeea, and the call you hear more often#

The song is two clear whistles then a trill, written for a century as drink your teeeea. Some birds drop the middle note and sing a two-part version, which throws people who learned the phrase.

The call matters more for finding one, because towhees call all year and sing only in season. It is a rising two-note chewink or tow-hee from inside a hedge. Hearing that repeatedly through April tells you more about whether you have a resident bird than watching the seed patch does.

Red eye, white corners, plain back#

A male is boldly patterned: black hood, throat and upperparts, rich rufous flanks, clean white belly. The female is the same bird in warm brown instead of black. Both show white corners at the end of a long tail, obvious as the bird flies away from you low into cover, and a small white flash at the base of the primaries.

The eye is red across most of the range and white or straw in Florida and southern Georgia, with amber and orange birds in between. All of it is one species.

Exactly what to scatter, and how close#

1. Black oil Yes
2. Hearts Yes
3. Millet Yes
4. Cracked corn Yes

Note what is missing: there is no top-tier food. Black oil sunflower, sunflower hearts, millet and cracked corn are all taken readily and nothing rates above them. That is useful, because it means seed choice is not your lever. A towhee with cover eats whatever you scatter; a towhee without cover is not tempted by an upgrade in the bag.

Buy on convenience and on what the rest of the yard wants. A workable towhee-edge mix is 50% millet, 30% black oil sunflower and 20% cracked corn by volume, which also suits the sparrows, juncos and doves on the same patch. Scatter about a cup over 4 to 6 square feet each morning, on bare ground, in leaf litter, or on a ground tray under 12 in high, and put out only what goes by dusk.

Safflower and striped sunflower are taken occasionally and both are worth knowing about if blackbirds or squirrels are stripping your ground patch. Suet, peanuts and nyjer are close to pointless for this bird, and a low platform at knee height is the highest it will normally go.

Why yours stays at the edge and will not come in#

Almost every towhee complaint is on this list, and the first three are one problem seen from three angles.

• Nothing to retreat into. The commonest cause by far. The bird is in the neighborhood, comes to the boundary, and stops. Build the pile.
• The food is too far from cover. A patch 25 ft out on the lawn will be visited by doves and ignored by towhees. Move it to the shrub line and it can start working within days.
• The yard edge has been cleaned up. Leaf blowers, bare mulch and a mown strip to the fence remove the foraging substrate. Rake leaves under the shrubs instead of bagging them.
• Everything is hanging. A towhee will not use a tube, a suet cage or a peanut feeder. If all the food is in the air, it has no reason to be in your yard.
• Wrong season for your latitude. North of roughly the Ohio Valley they leave in October and return in April, so a winter absence in Michigan is normal.
• Cats. A bird feeding one hop from a brush pile is at low risk from a hawk and high risk from a cat. See cats and feeders.

The towhee year#

South of about Virginia and through the Gulf states towhees are resident, and the same pair can hold the same tangle year after year. Further north they are summer birds: arrival from late March through April, departure through October, with a scatter wintering north of the usual line where cover and food are good.

Feeder use peaks twice. Late winter and early spring, when natural seed is gone and territories are being set up, is the best window in the resident range. The second is late summer and autumn as juveniles disperse, and those young birds, streaky brown and confusing, are far more willing to come into the open than the adults.

Numbers have fallen across much of the range in recent decades as scrubby early-successional habitat has been lost to development and to maturing forest, which gives yard cover a value beyond your own list. Fall bird feeding covers the season it matters most, and the bird food preference chart shows how the towhee lines up against everything else working your ground layer.

Frequently asked questions#

How do I attract an Eastern Towhee to my yard?

Build cover first and feed second. Put up a brush pile roughly 6 to 8 ft across and 3 to 4 ft high, coarse limbs at the bottom and finer material on top, at the edge of the yard where it meets a hedge or wood line. Scatter a cup of mixed sunflower, millet and cracked corn on bare ground or leaf litter within about 6 ft of it. If your yard has no dense low cover at all, no amount of seed will bring one in, because the bird will not stand in the open.

What is the double-scratch?

A foraging move. The bird hops forward, then kicks both feet backwards at the same instant, dragging leaf litter behind it and exposing seed and invertebrates underneath. A towhee is a big heavy-legged bird by sparrow standards, so its version is loud: you can hear one working a leaf layer from 30 ft away through an open window. It also tells you what to provide, because a bird built to rake material has nothing to do on a clean bare tray.

What is the difference between an Eastern and a Spotted Towhee?

The back. An Eastern Towhee has plain black upperparts on the male and plain brown on the female. A Spotted Towhee has bold white spots and bars across the back and wing coverts. They are western and eastern counterparts, split into two species after decades of being treated as one bird, and they meet and hybridise in a narrow band through the Great Plains. If you are east of the Plains, an unspotted back means Eastern.

Why does my towhee have white eyes?

Because it is from Florida or southern Georgia. Towhees in that part of the range have white or straw-colored irises rather than the deep red of birds further north, and the change is gradual up through the Southeast, so central Georgia and Carolina birds can be orange or amber. It is normal geographic variation within the same species and has nothing to do with age, health or hybridisation.

Do Eastern Towhees eat suet or use hanging feeders?

Barely, and no. Suet rates as a rare food for this species, and peanuts and nyjer are close to ignored. It is a ground bird with a heavy build and no interest in clinging, so tubes, suet cages and peanut feeders are all irrelevant. Everything you offer a towhee goes on bare ground, in leaf litter, or in a low open tray at or near ground level near cover.

Sources and further reading

1. Eastern Towhee Cornell Lab of Ornithology, All About Birds Measurements, eye color variation, habitat, song and foraging
2. Eastern Towhee National Audubon Society Guide to North American Birds Range, habitat and seasonal movement
3. Feeding Birds Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Project FeederWatch Ground-feeding presentation and seed preferences
4. North American Breeding Bird Survey US Geological Survey Long-term population trend for shrubland species