[mou] Spotted Towhee-Hennepin County

[Dennis/Barbara Martin]

Looked at a towhee in our backyard this morning and were extremely surprised
to see it was a first year female Spotted Towhee.  We do a lot of ground
feeding and the yard was covered with more than 60 juncos plus a lot of
white-throateds and a few Fox Sparrows.  Not to count all the other normal
birds around.  Overall there were probably better that 125 birds in the yard
at once and that tends to attract unusual birds.  In past years it has been
times like this that we have seen swamp, clay-colored and other sparrows
that we do not have the correct habitat for.

We are presuming this was a first year bird as the gray-brown head color
described in Sibley was interspersed with light brownish streaking.  The
back spotting and the dual wing bars were also a light tan color and not the
clear white color shown in several field guides.  We were able to get quite
a few photos but as many of you know we use film and not digital so do not
know yet if they will come out.  We would appreciate comments from others
who have experience with first year Spotted Towhees if we are interpreting
the tan color as first year as this was new for us.

Also of interest was a junco showing some of the marks of a Pink-sided
Junco, a subspecies of the Dark-eyed Junco.  This bird was not pure as it
had marks of both the normal slate-colored race and the pink-sided.

Dennis and Barbara Martin
dbmartin@skypoint.com