Bird Profile
Eastern Towhee
A big, long-tailed sparrow that kicks leaf litter backward with both feet at once. It feeds on the ground under brush, not on a hanging feeder, and until 1995 it shared a name with the Spotted Towhee.
The short answer
- Eastern Towhees feed on the ground under cover, so seed on a low tray under a hedge works and a hanging tube feeder does not.
- The double-scratch is the identification: a forward hop followed by a simultaneous backward kick with both feet, over and over.
- Males are black above with rufous sides and a white belly. Females are identical in pattern with warm brown replacing the black.
- The Eastern and Spotted Towhee were treated as one species, the Rufous-sided Towhee, until they were split in 1995. Older field guides show only the combined form.
- Eyes are red across most of the range, but birds in Florida and southern Georgia have pale straw or white eyes.
At a glance
- Scientific name
- Pipilo erythrophthalmus
- Length
- 6.8 to 8.2 in (17 to 21 cm)
- Wingspan
- 7.9 to 11.0 in (20 to 28 cm)
- Weight
- 1.1 to 1.8 oz (32 to 53 g)
- Range
- Eastern US west to the Great Plains, north to the Great Lakes and southern New England. Withdraws from the north in winter.
- Favorite foods
- White proso millet, black oil sunflower, cracked corn, sunflower hearts
- Best feeder
- Ground feeder or low tray set under or beside shrubs
- At feeders
- Year-round in the Southeast, mostly spring and fall farther north
Something is making a lot of noise in the leaves under your shrubs, and it is not a squirrel. The Eastern Towhee (Pipilo erythrophthalmus) is an oversized, long-tailed sparrow, about 8 inches (20 cm), that feeds by kicking leaf litter backward with both feet at once. The racket is out of all proportion to the bird.
Males are boldly marked: black head, throat, back, wings and tail, rich rufous sides, and a clean white belly, with white corners flashing in the tail as they fly into cover. Females wear the identical pattern with warm brown in place of the black.
They are ground birds. Seed at 5 feet (1.5 m) in a tube is invisible to a towhee, and seed scattered on an open lawn is not much better. This profile covers identification, the double-scratch, the ground feeding setup that works, the pairing with the Spotted Towhee that older field guides handled as one species, and what is happening to towhee numbers as thickets disappear.
How to identify an Eastern Towhee#
Start with size and shape: a chunky, thick-billed bird with a long, rounded tail, noticeably bigger than a song sparrow and closer to a small robin in bulk.
The male has a solid black hood covering head, throat and upper breast, a solid black back and wings, bright rufous flanks and a white belly. In flight or when the tail is fanned, white corners show at the tail tip. There is a small white patch at the base of the primaries and a thin white streak along the folded wing.
The female is exactly the same pattern in warm cinnamon brown instead of black. She is not drab, just browner, and in shade she can look surprisingly dark.
Eye color is worth knowing. Across most of the range the eye is deep red. In Florida and parts of southern Georgia it is pale straw to whitish, with an orange-eyed intermediate zone. Birds there also average slightly smaller.
Confusion species#
| Bird | Why it gets confused | How to separate it |
|---|---|---|
| Spotted Towhee | Nearly identical shape and pattern | Bold white spotting across back and wings; western range |
| American Robin | Similar bulk, dark and rusty | Feeds on open lawn, gray back, plain orange breast, upright stance |
| Dark-eyed Junco | Ground feeder, white outer tail | Much smaller, no rufous, pale pink bill |
| Female Eastern Bluebird | Warm brown and blue-gray | Small, thin bill, perches upright in the open |
| Brown Thrasher | Same thickets, similar size | Rufous above, heavily streaked below, long curved bill |
The double-scratch#
Towhees do not peck at the surface. They hop forward, then kick both feet backward simultaneously, dragging leaf litter behind them and exposing whatever was underneath, then look at what they uncovered. The whole sequence repeats every second or two.
It is a genuine field mark. Most sparrows scratch one foot at a time or simply pick at the ground. The two-footed backward hop is shared by towhees, some sparrows in the same group, and not much else in an eastern yard, and it is audible from 30 feet (9 m) away in dry leaves.
Why the sound matters more than the sighting
Towhees stay in cover. In practice you will hear the scratching first, then see a dark shape moving under the shrubs, and only then get a proper look when the bird hops up onto a low branch to check on you. If you hear steady rustling under a hedge in the East and no squirrel appears, look for a towhee.
Where and when you will see them#
Eastern Towhees occupy the eastern United States from the Gulf Coast north to New England, southern Ontario and the Great Lakes, and west to about the eastern edge of the Great Plains. Birds in the southern half of the range are year-round residents. Northern breeders pull south for the winter, which is why a New England yard may host towhees from April to October and none in January, while a South Carolina yard has them all year.
The habitat is early successional and shrubby: forest edge, regenerating clearcuts, old fields growing into brush, power line corridors, scrub oak, coastal thicket and overgrown yard boundaries. Deep closed-canopy forest holds few, and a clean suburban lawn holds none.
Regional timing is covered in feeding birds in the Southeast.
Feeding towhees: ground level or nothing#
The bill is a general-purpose seed cracker, and the diet runs roughly two thirds plant material across the year: seeds, acorn and other mast fragments, blackberries, blueberries and other small fruit. During the breeding season insects, spiders, millipedes and even small salamanders make up a large share, and nestlings are fed almost entirely on invertebrates.
| Food | Towhee response | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| White proso millet | Excellent | Best value on the ground |
| Black oil sunflower | Excellent | Cracked easily by that bill |
| Sunflower hearts | Excellent | No hull mess under the hedge |
| Cracked corn | Good in winter | Keep it dry, it molds fast on soil |
| Peanut pieces | Taken | Offer chopped |
| Nyjer | Mostly ignored | Wrong shape of bird for finch feeders |
| Milo and wheat | Kicked aside | Standard cheap-mix filler |
The delivery method is the whole trick. Use a ground feeder or catch tray placed directly under or beside a shrub border, or simply scatter seed in a patch of leaf litter at the drip line of a hedge. A low platform feeder at 12 to 18 inches (30 to 45 cm) also works and keeps seed off wet soil.
Site the seed inside the drip line
Put the tray under the outer branches of a shrub rather than 6 feet (1.8 m) out on the grass. Towhees feed with cover directly overhead and will use a spot like that within days, while ignoring an identical tray in the open for weeks. A brush pile next to the tray does more than any change of seed.
Song, calls and behavior#
The song is one of the standard mnemonics in American birding: drink your teeeeea, two sharp notes and a long buzzy trill. The trill part varies a lot between individuals and regions, and some birds drop the introductory notes entirely.
The call is a rising, nasal chewink or tow-hee, which is where the name came from. Both sexes give it, often as an alarm when you walk past their thicket.
Males sing from an exposed perch, usually a bare twig at the top of a shrub, then drop straight back into cover. Outside that they spend almost all their time within about 6 feet (1.8 m) of the ground.
Nesting#
Nests are on the ground or very low, which is unusual for a bird this conspicuous. The female builds a cup of leaves, bark strips, grass and rootlets, either sunk into leaf litter under a shrub or placed up to about 5 feet (1.5 m) in dense cover as the season goes on.
Clutches are typically 3 to 4 creamy eggs with fine reddish-brown speckling. The female incubates for about 12 to 13 days, both parents feed the young, and chicks leave the nest at roughly 10 to 12 days, often before they can fly properly. Two broods a season is normal in the South.
Ground nests in fragmented shrub habitat take heavy pressure from brown-headed cowbirds, and towhees do not eject cowbird eggs.
Ground nesters and outdoor cats
A bird that nests on the ground, feeds on the ground and rarely flies more than a few feet is close to the worst case for cat predation. If you have towhees using a shrub border, keeping cats indoors matters more there than anywhere else in the yard. See cats and birds and cats and bird feeders.
Population and conservation#
Eastern Towhee numbers have fallen substantially over the last half century across much of the range, particularly in the Northeast and upper Midwest. The main driver is not persecution or pesticides but succession: the old fields and cutover woodlands that filled the twentieth-century landscape have either grown into closed forest or been developed, and the shrubby middle stage that towhees need has thinned out.
They are not federally listed, and they remain common in the Southeast, but the trend is one of the clearer signals of what happens to shrubland birds when a landscape loses its messy edges.
Yard-scale, the response is simple and slightly countercultural: keep a thicket, keep the leaves, keep the brush pile. The planting side of that is in native plants for birds.
A towhee setup that works#
- Seed on the ground or on a tray under 18 inches (45 cm), sited under shrub branches.
- Millet and black oil sunflower, refreshed in small amounts so it does not sit and mold.
- A brush pile or dense hedge within a hop of the food.
- Leaf litter left in place through fall and winter, since that is the foraging substrate.
- Cats indoors, because towhees live at cat height all year.
Frequently asked questions#
What bird is scratching in my leaves under the bushes?
Very likely an Eastern Towhee. They forage with a distinctive double-scratch: a small hop forward followed by both feet kicking backward together, throwing leaf litter behind them. The noise is loud enough that people repeatedly go looking for a squirrel or a chipmunk and find a bird the size of a small robin.
What do eastern towhees eat at feeders?
White proso millet, black oil sunflower, sunflower hearts and cracked corn, all taken on the ground or from a low tray. Their wider diet is roughly two thirds plant material, mostly seeds, acorn fragments and fruit, with a heavy shift to insects and other invertebrates during the breeding season. They will not use a narrow tube perch.
What is the difference between an eastern towhee and a spotted towhee?
Eastern Towhees have a plain black back and wings with a small white patch at the base of the primaries. Spotted Towhees have bold white spots and streaks across the back and wing coverts. Their ranges barely overlap: Eastern is a bird of the East, Spotted is western, and they meet only on the Great Plains where they sometimes hybridize.
Was the eastern towhee once called something else?
Yes. Until 1995 the Eastern and Spotted Towhees were treated as a single species, the Rufous-sided Towhee. Any field guide printed before the mid-1990s shows one species with eastern and western forms, which is why older bird books and family lists do not match modern ones.
Why do some eastern towhees have white eyes?
Eye color varies geographically. Birds through most of the range have deep red eyes, but the population in Florida and parts of southern Georgia has pale straw-yellow to whitish eyes, with intermediate orange eyes in a zone between. It is a regional trait, not age, illness or a different species.
How do I attract towhees to my yard?
Scatter millet or sunflower on the ground under a hedge, brush pile or shrub border, or use a low ground tray in the same spot. Then leave the leaf litter there alone. Towhees need dense low cover within a hop of the food and something to scratch through, and a tidy yard of mown grass will not hold them regardless of the seed on offer.