a towhee by any other name

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Martha Brewer sent me a second photo and it's probably the best I have ever seen of a male Eastern Towhee. Just perfect right down to the color of the leaves. (If I have seen a better one...I do not remember it.)

I met Martha and her husband George at Wilderness Wildlife Week in Pigeon Forge two weeks ago. They are from north Georgia near Ellijay and they came to one of my presentations and visited with me at my Author's Table afterwards.

Now, some of you of a certain age might wonder, "Whatever happened to the rufous-sided towhee? Isn't that what I am looking at?"

After all, the rufous-sided was in my first bird book: the little Golden Nature Guide of Birds I had when I was 12-years-old. And in my first "grown-up" guide: A Field Guide to the Birds East of the Rockies by Roger Tory Peterson.

So what's the deal?

The deal is this. Science is not static and ornithology, like nature, is a work in progress.

If you look at the above range map from the Golden Guide you see that once upon a time the species known as the rufous-sided towhee ranged from the east coast to the west. But oddly, the western rufouses looked a bit different than the eastern. They had spots. After careful study, it was decided that the two populations only intermingled slightly in the middle of the country but were actually two different species. So in 1995, the American Ornithological Society (AOS) "split" the rufous-sided into two separate species. Out west, they are now known as spotted towhees and our eastern birds became the Eastern towhee. 

Any field guide published before 1995 has the rufous-sided but my Sibley's published in 2000 and my most recent Peterson's published in 2005 (see below) has them as two species but a rufous-sided by any other name would still sing, "drink your teeeeaaaaa." 

Once asked how many field guides do you need? I replied, "As many as you have time to peruse. But stay current."