Eastern Towhee

About the Eastern Towhee

The eastern towhee (Pipilo erythrophthalmus), also known as chewink, joree, or joree bird, is a large New World sparrow. The taxonomy of the towhees has been under debate in recent decades, and formerly this bird and the spotted towhee were considered a single species, the rufous-sided towhee.

Their breeding habitat is brushy areas across eastern North America. They nest either low in bushes or on the ground under shrubs. Northern birds migrate to the southern United States. One of this species was recorded as a vagrant to western Europe, a single bird in Great Britain in 1966.

The song is a short drink your teeeeea lasting around one second, starting with a sharp call ("drink!") and ending with a short trill "teeeeea". The name "towhee" is onomatopoeic description of one of the towhee's most common calls, a short, two-part call rising in pitch and sometimes also called a "chewink" call.

The eastern towhee was described by Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in 1758 in the 10th edition of his Systema Naturae and given the binomial name Fringilla erythrophthalma. This species is now placed in the genus Pipilo that was introduced by the French ornithologist Louis Pierre Vieillot... Wikipedia →