Bird Profile
Spotted Towhee
The western half of a species pair that was called the Rufous-sided Towhee until 1995. Black hood, rufous sides, and rows of white spots down the back, kicking through leaf litter under the shrubs.
The short answer
- The white spotting across the back and wing coverts is what separates a Spotted Towhee from the plain-backed Eastern Towhee.
- Feed them on the ground under cover. They use a low tray or scattered seed at the edge of a hedge, not a hanging tube.
- Both towhees forage with a two-footed backward double-scratch that makes far more noise than a bird that size should.
- Spotted and Eastern Towhees were a single species, the Rufous-sided Towhee, until they were split in 1995.
- Pacific coast birds are largely resident; interior and northern breeders move to lower elevations and southward for winter.
At a glance
- Scientific name
- Pipilo maculatus
- Length
- 6.7 to 8.3 in (17 to 21 cm)
- Wingspan
- About 11 in (28 cm)
- Weight
- 1.2 to 1.7 oz (33 to 49 g)
- Range
- Western North America from southern British Columbia to Mexico, east to the Great Plains. Resident on the Pacific slope, partly migratory inland.
- Favorite foods
- White proso millet, black oil sunflower, sunflower hearts, cracked corn
- Best feeder
- Ground feeder or low tray beside dense shrubs
- At feeders
- Year-round in the Pacific states, fall through spring in the interior
The Spotted Towhee (Pipilo maculatus) is the western half of a species pair. Black hood, black back and wings sprinkled with white spots, rufous sides, white belly, red eye, long dark tail with white corners. Females carry the same pattern with sooty gray-brown replacing the black.
Until 1995 it was not a species at all in the official sense. It and the Eastern Towhee were treated as one bird, the Rufous-sided Towhee, and any field guide printed before the mid-1990s shows them that way. That single fact explains most of the confusion people run into when an old book and a new app disagree.
It is a ground bird that lives in the shrub layer, and it forages by hopping forward and kicking both feet backward at once. This profile covers identification and the comparison with the Eastern Towhee, where and when it occurs, the ground feeding setup that works, the song variation that trips people up, and nesting.
How to identify a Spotted Towhee#
Look for a chunky, long-tailed bird about 8 inches (20 cm) long, thick-billed, working the ground under cover. The male has a solid black head, throat and upper breast, black upperparts, rich rufous flanks and a clean white belly.
The mark that names the bird is the spotting: white spots and short streaks scattered across the scapulars, back and wing coverts, plus white tips on the outer tail feathers that flash when it flies. The eye is deep red in adults.
Females are patterned identically but with dull sooty gray-brown where the male is black. Juveniles in summer are brown and streaked below and look like a different species until they molt.
There is real geographic variation. Coastal Pacific birds tend to be darker with reduced spotting, while interior and Great Basin birds are paler and more heavily spotted. This is normal within the species and not worth agonizing over.
Spotted versus Eastern Towhee#
| Feature | Spotted Towhee | Eastern Towhee |
|---|---|---|
| Back and wings | Rows of bold white spots | Plain black (male) or brown (female) |
| White at base of primaries | Small or absent | Small but usually visible |
| Female color | Sooty gray-brown | Warm cinnamon brown |
| Eye | Red | Red, but straw to white in Florida |
| Song | Buzzy trill, often with no introduction | Two clear notes then a trill, drink your teeeeea |
| Call | Rising, catlike, whiny zhreee | Rising nasal chewink |
| Range | West to the Great Plains | East to the Great Plains |
The two meet along river corridors on the Great Plains, in a band running roughly through Nebraska, Kansas and eastern Colorado, and they hybridize where they meet. That interbreeding is exactly why they were lumped together in the first place, and modern treatment as two species rests on the fact that the hybrid zone stays narrow rather than spreading.
Why your old field guide says Rufous-sided Towhee
The 1995 split turned one species into two. If you inherited a bird book from the 1970s or 1980s, it will show a single Rufous-sided Towhee with an eastern form and a western spotted form. Nothing about the birds changed; the classification did.
The double-scratch#
Towhees do not pick at the surface of the ground. They hop forward and then kick backward with both feet simultaneously, dragging litter behind them and exposing seeds and insects underneath, then inspect the result. The sequence repeats every second or two.
The noise is the point. A towhee working dry oak leaves sounds like something considerably larger, and a great many reports of squirrels, rats or lizards under the shrubs turn out to be a towhee. Learning the sound is the most efficient way to find them, since they stay in cover most of the day.
Where and when you will see them#
Spotted Towhees occur from southern British Columbia south through the Pacific states, the Great Basin, the Rockies and the Southwest into Mexico, reaching east to the western edge of the Great Plains.
Birds along the Pacific slope are largely resident and use yards year-round. Interior and northern populations are partly migratory, moving downslope and south for winter, which puts towhees into Texas and the southern plains from fall into spring where none nested.
The habitat is dense and low: chaparral, coastal scrub, oak woodland understory, riparian thickets, sagebrush edges, brushy canyon bottoms and any suburban yard with a real shrub layer. Regional notes are in feeding birds in California and feeding birds in the Pacific Northwest.
Feeding Spotted Towhees#
The annual diet runs roughly two thirds plant material: seeds, acorn fragments, and fruit including berries, wild grape and toyon. During nesting they switch heavily to insects, spiders, millipedes and other invertebrates, and nestlings get almost nothing else.
| Food | Towhee response | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| White proso millet | Excellent | The cheapest way to hold them |
| Black oil sunflower | Excellent | Cracked without difficulty |
| Sunflower hearts | Excellent | Less hull mess under shrubs |
| Cracked corn | Good in winter | Molds quickly on damp soil |
| Peanut pieces | Taken | Chopped, not whole |
| Nyjer | Mostly ignored | Finch food, wrong bill |
| Milo and wheat | Kicked aside | Filler in cheap mixes |
Delivery decides everything. Use a ground feeder or catch tray set under the outer branches of a shrub, or scatter seed directly into leaf litter at the edge of a hedge. A low platform feeder at 12 to 18 inches (30 to 45 cm) keeps seed off wet ground in a Pacific Northwest winter and is still low enough for them.
Feed the spill, not a new feeder
If you already run a hanging feeder, the fastest way to add towhees is a catch tray or a cleared patch of litter directly beneath it. Towhees make a living on what other birds drop, and putting cover within a hop of that spot, using a brush pile or a low shrub, converts a spill zone into a reliable feeding station.
Song, calls and behavior#
The song is a buzzy trill, and in many western populations it is only a trill: no introductory notes at all, just a dry insect-like rattle from the top of a shrub. Interior birds more often add one or two sharp notes first, which makes them sound closer to an Eastern Towhee.
The common call is a rising, whining, slightly catlike zhreee, and people regularly mistake it for a gray catbird in areas where both occur.
Males sing from an exposed twig at the top of the shrub layer and then drop straight back into cover. Away from that they stay low, and outside the breeding season they are solitary or in loose association rather than in flocks.
Ground feeding brings ground problems
Seed on the ground under shrubs attracts more than towhees. Keep quantities small, sweep or rake the spot every week or two, and never leave a wet mat of hulls and corn sitting through a warm spell, which molds fast. The management details are in rodents under bird feeders.
Nesting#
The female builds a cup of bark strips, twigs, grass and rootlets, either on the ground sunk into litter under a shrub or up to about 5 feet (1.5 m) in dense cover. Ground nests are typically well hidden at the base of a bush, and the bird walks in and out rather than flying directly to it.
Clutches are usually 3 to 4 gray-white to greenish eggs with fine brown speckling. The female incubates for around 12 to 13 days, both parents feed the young, and chicks leave the nest at roughly 10 to 12 days, often before they fly well. Two broods a season are common in the south of the range.
Like the Eastern Towhee, they are regular hosts for the brown-headed cowbird and do not eject cowbird eggs.
Population and conservation#
Spotted Towhees are common through most of their range and long-term trends are broadly stable, in contrast to the clearer decline seen in Eastern Towhees. Western scrub and chaparral have held up better than eastern old fields, and towhees tolerate suburban yards well as long as those yards keep shrubs.
The local pressures are habitat cleanup, outdoor cats, and window collisions. A bird that spends its life within about 6 feet (1.8 m) of the ground in shrubbery is unusually exposed to cats, and the case for keeping them in is in cats and birds. Planting guidance for the shrub layer they need is in native plants for birds.
A Spotted Towhee setup that works#
- Seed on the ground or on a tray under 18 inches (45 cm), set beneath shrub branches.
- Millet and black oil sunflower in small, frequently refreshed amounts.
- Dense low cover within a hop: hedge, chaparral shrub or brush pile.
- Leaf litter left in place under those shrubs through the year.
- A raked-out spill zone under an existing feeder, which is usually all it takes to get the first bird.
Frequently asked questions#
What do spotted towhees eat at feeders?
White proso millet, black oil sunflower, sunflower hearts and cracked corn, taken on the ground or from a low tray under shrubs. Away from feeders roughly two thirds of the annual diet is seeds, acorn fragments and fruit, with a heavy shift to insects, spiders and other invertebrates while they are raising young.
What is the difference between a spotted towhee and an eastern towhee?
Spotted Towhees have rows of white spots across the back, scapulars and wing coverts. Eastern Towhees have a plain black or brown back with only a small white flash at the base of the primaries. Range is the easier test: Spotted is the western bird and Eastern the bird of the East, and they meet only on the Great Plains, where hybrids occur.
Why is a bird thrashing around in the leaves under my bushes?
It is probably a Spotted Towhee doing its double-scratch. The bird hops forward and then kicks both feet backward at once, flinging leaf litter behind it to expose seeds and insects. It is loud, and it is the single most reliable way to locate a towhee that is otherwise staying inside cover.
Do spotted towhees migrate?
It depends where they live. Birds along the Pacific coast and through much of California, Oregon and Washington are year-round residents. Populations breeding in the interior mountains, the northern Rockies and the northern Great Basin move to lower elevations or shift south for the winter, reaching Texas and the southern Great Plains.
Was the spotted towhee once called the rufous-sided towhee?
Yes. Until the 1995 split, the Spotted and Eastern Towhees were treated as one species called the Rufous-sided Towhee, with western spotted forms and eastern plain-backed forms. Field guides printed before the mid-1990s show a single species, which is the reason older bird lists and books disagree with current ones.
How do I attract spotted towhees to my yard?
Put millet or sunflower on the ground or on a tray no more than 18 inches (45 cm) high, tucked under the outer branches of a shrub or beside a brush pile, and leave the leaf litter under those shrubs alone. Towhees want dense low cover within one hop of the food, and they will use a spot like that far sooner than an identical tray on open ground.