Like a barnyard chicken or a miniature wild turkey, the little black bird scraped away at the leaves, using one foot at a time to reveal a seed or bug on the woodland floor, then employing both feet ...

Often missed by birders, particularly those of us who hear poorly, is one of our most attractive species — the eastern towhee. Until 1995, it was called the rufous-sided towhee, a very descriptive ...

Characteristics: A sparrow-sized bird, this towhee has a black head, red eye and the males have a black back with white spots, hence the common name. Females are browner instead of black. The ...

The rufous-sided towhee, with its striking plumage, is a somewhat secretive member of the finch family that flits from beneath vegetation to visit feeders or scratch around in garden litter.

CHICO — A Rufous-sided Towhee visited my yard. Or at least I think that’s what it was.? The first time the bird appeared, I grabbed an Audubon field guide for identification.?The trouble with those ...

A selection of bird essays by renowned ornithologist and artist George Miksch Sutton (1898-1982), founder of the Avian Research Center in Norman, Okla., was posthumously published in 1986 as “Birds ...

Although bird identification can be perplexing — baffling at times for even the most accomplished birders — the principles of identification are relatively simple. We mostly recognize birds by their ...

It’s been hot for a week, made worse by thick humid conditions. Smart money says stay in the house. But playing it smart means no hope to see good things in nature. Indoors offers nothing. Outdoors, ...

Back in the day, we did not have an app that could tell us what birds we were hearing. Now we have Merlin from the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology. Press “record” on this free app, and it listens to ...