576 U.S. NATIONAL MUSEUM BULLETIN 23 7 tart i 



Val Nolan (MS.) reports his interesting observations on the song 

 of a female Towhee: "At 0430 on Apr. 23, 1957, a cloudy morning 

 with the temperatm^e at 65°, 1 heard a loud and unfamiliar song, 

 faintly reminiscent of the utterance of the male towhee. A female 

 Towhee was perched 14 feet high in the top of a flowering dogwood 

 in an old field; in 5 minutes she sang 15 times, then flew down and 

 fell silent. 



"Her song was made up of five and sometimes six notes, a long 

 'dee' followed by a series of rapid 'da' sounds on the same key. 

 The quality was labored and unmusical, flat and somewhat squeaky. 



"I heard her no more, although I passed the spot daily and in June 

 spent two full days watching warbler nests nearby. A male towhee 

 held territory there, but he was not in evidence within 15 minutes 

 of the time when the female sang. A towhee nest with eggs was 

 being incubated there in May. 



"This is reminiscent in certain particulars of the singing of the 

 female song sparrow mentioned by Mrs. Nice (1943), whose song 

 'is confined to the period in early spring before nest building be- 

 gins * * *; it is always given from an elevation — a large weed, a 

 bush or even a tree, in contrast to the female's usual behavior of 

 staying close to the ground; it is short, simple, and entirely unmusical.' 

 And, like the female song sparrow's performance, the female towhee's 

 apparently elicited no response from other birds of the same species." 



Field marks. — The rufous-sided towhee is about the size of the 

 catbird but much more robust. The male is black above and below 

 from bill to breast, has chestnut sides, white belly, and conspicuous 

 white patches on the tail. The tail is used vigorously, flicking, open- 

 ing and closing almost constantly. The female has the black replaced 

 by brown. Young birds of both sexes are markedly streaked on the 

 breast and the flank colors are poorly developed. E. H. Forbush 

 (1929) points out that a bird scratching noisily in dense brush is 

 usually a towhee or a brown thrasher. 



Enemies. — Records of the towhee as a host for both internal and 

 external parasites include the following: H. J. Van Cleave (1942), 

 an acanthocephalan, Plagiorhynchus jorwMSUS Van Cleave; O. W. 

 Olsen (1939), a spiruroid nematode, Dispharynx pipilonis Olsen; 

 H. E. Ewing (1929), the North American chigger, Tromhicula irriians; 

 C. M. Herman (1938), Haemaphysalis leporis-palustris. The species 

 has been recorded as a food item of the Cooper's hawk (F. N. and 

 Frances Hammerstrom, 1951). 



Herbert Friedmann (1929) states that the towhee is a very common 

 victim of the cowbird, and continues: 



At Ithaca, this species is uncommon and so extremely local that I have not 

 had any experience with it as a molothrine host. This bird is called one of 



