Towhees

It has been pointed out to me that I haven't written a blog for a long time. The reason has to do partly with laziness, but also partly because this early winter season is pretty quiet, and I am having a hard time finding something to write about. But then I remembered towhees.  

Towhees are, mainly, extra large sparrows, often with brighter patterns and colors than the usually brown stripey sparrows. And, more to the point, we have four of the six North American species right here in the southwest, and I had always wanted to write something about them.

However, let me start with the Eastern Towhee, which is not found here. We have only recently moved here from Arkansas, where the Eastern Towhee is common, and for completeness let me put here a picture of one I took in Arkansas.

Note, on this handsome bird, the red eye, the black back, and the orange side, with a spot of white right about the middle. This species is  common, and the only towhee, in almost exactly the right half of the United States.

In almost exactly the left half of the United States (this time including Arizona) is the nearly identical  Spotted Towhee, except for its namesake spots.

 The second towhee found in Arizona, in fact almost confined to Arizona, is also one of the plainest. Abert's Towhee is plain gray-brown with a bit of black around the mouth, and a bit of richer brown under the tail. To jazz it up a little bit, I'll show it doing something dramatic.

The third Arizona towhee, the Canyon Towhee, is just about as drab as Abert's. Supposedly it has a reddish crown, but it's pretty hard to see. The only thing that puts it ahead of the Abert's is that it has a necklace of black streaks on a tawny throat.

Of course I'm saving the best for last, the Green-tailed Towhee.  At least it is my favorite. The bird is gray with a bright red crown, a strongly contrasting white throat, and the finest  patina of green over the wings and tail. When you first begin seeing them, in late summer, they are skulking around in the brush, only showing glimpses of the red crown, the white throat, and then, towards September, they keep getting more and more numerous, from the bottom of the garden to the top of the mountain, until they are everywhere, the commonest bird around. At first you are thrilled to see them in he open, posing for any kind of photo you want. Finally you are jaded, and looking for something else to point your camera at.

 

 

The California Towhee, another plain brown job, is found up and down the Pacific Coast. And finally, the Rufous-crowned Sparrow is often considered along with the Towhees. It occurs in Arizona, but we haven't seen it so far.

The Year in Review

Well. at the beginning of 2020 the pandemic began, and Cheryl and I went into lockdown. We were told not to travel anywhere, so we didn't travel. We were told not to spend close-up time with anyone outside our immediate family, so we did not spend close-up time with anyone except our immediate family, and do you know what? That's how we live anyway. The only major change is, now we have our groceries delivered. For entertainment we watch and photograph the wildlife that comes to our house, or that we find on Mt. Lemmon (we live on a cul-de-sac just off the Catalina Highway, only a couple of miles to where the road starts winding upward), and that's good enough for us.

What I want to show now is the variety of wildlife we can generally see here every year. I'll do mammals first, and on my next blog I'll show some of our favorite birds and reptiles.

Bobcat, common (evidently) in the foothills; they probably specialize on rabbits. I have found their kills, where they have eaten everything except the entrails, just as, on a smaller scale, a domestic cat would do with a mouse.

Coyote. Family parties of three or more often pass through the yard. It is always a pleasure to see their lightness of foot, and quickness of travel.

Javelina (Collared Peccary). Herds prowl up and down the streets at night. On garbage day the garbage  is picked up early, and you need to get up early to set it out. It would seem to make more sense to set it out the night before, except the javelinas would come by and with their strength tip the garbage can over and scatter the garbage all over the street.

Mule Deer (Black-tailed Deer). Look at this healthy well-fed Mule Deer doe with its gray winter coat. I don't know where they come from, but every year a group of deer (the males with enormous racks) show up, and spend several days with us, to judge by the mat of  droppings they leave at their roost over at a distant corner of our lot, before they quietly drift away.

Desert Cottontails are plentiful on our land and, during their courtship ( called "cavorting"), you can almost constantly see somewhere in the yard a wild chase going on, which ends with a male and female facing each other tensely three or four feet apart, when one of them suddenly charges the other, and the other leaps straight up in the air while the charger rushes straight underneath him.

 

Round-tailed Ground Squirrels and Harris's Antelope Squirrels (the ones with their tails carried up over their backs) are the smallest of these mammals but taken together by sheer numbers probably make up the greatest biomass.

 

 

 

Cliff Chipmunks seem to occur at higher elevations, and seem to be the only species of chipmunk found here. 

Abert's Squirrel, surely one of the handsomest of the squirrels, occurs in the ponderosa pine region, and they are closely tied to these trees for food and nesting. They are numerous and tame, for instance, at the picnic area at Summerhaven,  the village at about the 7000 foot level on Mt. Lemmon, that Tucson people flee to to escape the torrid days of summer.

Packrats deserve a blog by themselves.