Once called the rufous-sided towhee, this bird has a new name. Learn what a spotted towhee looks like, sounds like and where to find one.
How to Identify a Spotted Towhee
Updated on Aug. 29, 2024
On This Page
Spotted Towhee Identification
A male spotted towhee has a black head, back and tail with a white belly, orange-red sides and multiple white wing marks. “I think that the first thing people notice is their sides,” David Wiedenfeld, senior conservation scientist with American Bird Conservancy, says. “They have rusty, brick-red sides of their body.” David also notes that the spotted towhee is about the size of a cardinal, but because it’s a member of the sparrow family, birders should look for a sparrow’s bill.
A female looks similar to her mate, but slight differences set her apart. “Females tend to be brownish; they’re grayer,” David says. “They have the same pattern on the side, but it’s not as bright as the males. They look mostly like the males, but not with as much of a contrast.” Both males and females have red eyes.
- Scientific Name: Pipilo maculatus
- Family: Sparrow
- Length: 8-1/4 inches
- Wingspan: 10-1/2 inches
Meet the towhees: The birds scratching up a storm in your backyard.
Range Map and Habitat
Look for these birds in old pastures, woodland edges and brushy backyards in states west of the Mississippi River. “They’ll sometimes be found in forests, but forests that have a lot of understory,” David says. “They like thickets along streams where you have a lot of shrubs and things like that, edges with an open area in a forest, or shrubby thickets.”
Some birders in the west can see this species year-round, but their migration tends to depend on the climate. “Where it gets really cold, they’ll migrate out in the winter and come back in the spring,” David explains.
Range maps provided by Kaufman Field Guides, the official field guide of Birds & Blooms.
Spotted Towhee vs Eastern Towhee
“I was told this is an eastern towhee, but I live in the San Joaquin Valley in California. Is it?” asks Birds & Blooms reader Michael Caskey of Fresno, California.
Kenn and Kimberly Kaufman: “The eastern towhee is replaced in the western states by a close relative, the spotted towhee. These two species are very similar, but the spotted towhee has more white markings on the wings and usually some white spots on the back. In your photo, we can see just enough of the white in the wing to be sure that this is the spotted towhee, not the eastern. This species can be found year-round in your area of California, although it’s more common in the mountains in summer and down in the valleys during winter.”
Spotted Towhee Name Change
Interestingly, eastern and spotted towhees used to be considered the same species. Older field guides show the rufous-sided towhee as a single, widespread species. Researchers split them into the eastern and spotted in 1995. Funnily enough, the distinctions still aren’t always clear — especially to the birds, themselves. “They hybridize, so sometimes they can’t tell the difference,” David notes, explaining that hybridization occurs in the Great Plains where the birds’ ranges overlap.
Diet: What Does a Spotted Towhee Eat?
A spotted towhee’s diet primarily consists of insects, spiders, caterpillars, seeds, berries; sometimes small lizards or snakes. “They eat a lot of the same things that our other songbirds do,” David says. “During the summer and breeding season, they’re eating a lot of bugs. In winter, they’ll eat seeds and fruits, berries and so forth. Even acorns, sometimes.”
Atypical feeder birds, spotted towhees tend to feed on the ground. “They hop around on the ground underneath shrubs and so forth,” David says. “They like areas that have a lot of leaf litter, and they scratch around in there and find little millipedes, and caterpillars, and whatever things you find in leaf litter.”
Nests and Eggs
This bird builds a nest on or near the ground using leaves, stems, pine needles and more. “Their nests are nice little woven things with grass and finer materials on the inside, and coarse materials on the outside,” David says. The female lays two to six gray, white, pinkish or greenish speckled eggs.
Learn fascinating sparrow facts you should know.
Spotted Towhee Song
This species sings a wide variety of songs, which typically feature high-pitched introductory notes followed by a trill. The bird also makes a buzzy rapid trill.
Listen to the spotted towhee’s song.
Bird songs provided by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.
About The Expert
As senior conservation scientist for American Bird Conservancy, David Wiedenfeld has worked on research pertaining to bird populations for decades. He served as Director of Research at the Sutton Avian Research Center, and he also served as Head of the Department of Vertebrate Ecology at the Charles Darwin Research Station in the Galapagos Islands. He holds a doctorate in biological science from Florida State University, and his favorite bird is the swallow-tailed kite.
Kenn and Kimberly Kaufman are the official bird experts for Birds & Blooms. They are the creators of the Kaufman Field Guide series and they lead birding trips all over the world.
Sources
- Cornell Lab of Ornithology, “Spotted Towhee: Overview“
- Project NestWatch, “Spotted Towhee“
