What bird means California to me?
If pressed to give my sincere selection, I wouldn’t choose the elegant quail, the oak-planting scrub-jay, or the virtuosic green-backed goldfinch. I would choose the California towhee, the plainest of all birds.
You’ve probably seen them, even if you don’t know their name: towhees are essentially large sparrows, rather chunky birds that hop around on the ground searching for fallen seeds. This particular species is a nearly uniform brown, relieved only by a patch of rusty red underneath the long tail. Almost every backyard and public park has its resident pair that remains together on territory all year round, foraging together while maintaining contact with sharp, metallic “chip!” calls.
Those familiar traits of appearance, feeding style and voice provide for more accurate and meaningful names than the current official designation. That odd word “towhee” is in fact a misnomer: it derives from a call given by an entirely different bird, the eastern towhee, a two-parted, rising squeak that our bird simply doesn’t make. Lumping them together as large-bodied sparrows, the taxonomists decided to call our bird a towhee, too, a decision that has since been recanted in the scientific classification, with modern genetic studies now confirming that the colorful eastern towhee (and our related spotted towhee) properly belong in a separate genus from the various brown birds that continue to go by that inaccurate “towhee” title.
I think we’d do better to revive some of the traditional names that actually describe the bird in question. The simplest of these is “brown bird” — a suitably direct and unpretentious title. In Spanish, all the towhees are known as rascadores, or scratchers, which is a much more appropriate name for encompassing the two separate branches of the tribe. A third name, popular in pioneer days, was brown chippie, in recognition of those constant, piercing calls.
Photo by Allan Hack
This bulky, long-tailed member of the sparrow family was traditionally known as the brown bird, for good reason.Why do I, and many people I know, love these California scratchers? They aren’t colorful or musical, and perform no impressive feats of flight or cognitive gymnastics. What they are is common and familiar: I think there is no trait more worth appreciating. If you wish to become more aware of birds and derive greater richness from your everyday life, there is no skill more valuable than a vibrant affection for what’s in front of you.
I enjoy reading dated old bird books. There just aren’t enough people in print these days to satisfy my appetite for passionate, unfiltered opinions about towhees. And what you find from reading these old voices is a rather wonderful pattern of writers blurting out instinctive, blunt descriptions of this bird’s plainness, foolishness and general lack of eloquence — but then admitting that they are actually rather charming.
“The bird is a rustic with the stolidity of the peasant,” declared Ralph Hoffman in 1928. “His efforts at song are a farce, a standing joke,” wrote Dawson in 1923. “There were brown chippies in the door-yard, brown chippies around the barns, and brown chippies in the brush till one got tired of the sight of them,” wrote Florence Merriam in 1896.
Taken out of context, you might think these are all unmitigated insults. But when you know both the bird and the sympathies of the authors, your reaction will rather be one of delighted recognition — greatly amplified when you concur with their subsequent conclusions of sheepish affection.
“I suppose there are few Californians who would willingly spare the homely, matter-of-fact presence of this bird under foot,” admits Dawson. A dangerous temptation of humanity is “to undervalue what is at hand and overvalue the rare or distant,” Merriam immediately amends her gentle mockery.
Look out in your yard and find those drab and chipping birds. Admit they are plain and dull — that’s why they don’t need to hide from you, trusting in their natural camouflage. Admit their calls are piercing and their duets a squeaky jumble — that’s how these most intimate of pairs and most companionable of birds maintain their lifelong bond and keep their partners constantly at hand.
And if you wish to belong to the place in which you live, then learn to love the California brown birds that make their homes beside us.
Jack Gedney’s On the Wing runs every other Monday. He is a co-owner of Wild Birds Unlimited in Novato, leads walks and seminars on nature in Marin, and blogs at Nature In Novato. You can reach him at jack@natureinnovato.com.
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Whatever you call it, it’s the most California bird of all - Marin Independent Journal
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