Does anyone else remember the good ol’ days, when towhees were Rufous-sided and harriers were Marsh Hawks? I sure do. All the bird books of my youth – my favorite was the old Golden guide, the one with the beige cover with the Indigo, Lazuli, and Painted Buntings on it - had those evocative names for what we now call Eastern Towhee (lame!) and Northern Harrier. It’s been Northern Harrier since 1982, so I was eight when the American Ornithologists Union rightfully changed it because every other member of the genus around the world was called a harrier. Sometimes you still hear old-timers dating themselves with that dusty old Marsh Hawk name. But what about that towhee – why did we ditch the perfectly descriptive Rufous-sided Towhee? I’ll get to that, but in the meantime, if you were one of the birders chasing the latest rare bird this week up in Provincetown, you were grateful for the change.
Rufous-sided Towhees always looked very different in the west than here in the east – out there they have bright white spots all over the back and different songs and calls. That was enough, supported by some genetic work - to warrant a split into two species back in 1995. The western subspecies kept its original name of Spotted Towhee in the divorce and we ended up with the comparatively boring new name of Eastern Towhee. What we don’t usually end up with around here is any Spotted Towhees, with only six state records having been positively adjudicated by the Mass Avian Records Committee. These include one on the Vineyard in 2015 and another at Allen’s Pond in Dartmouth in 2020. The only Cape record is a Monomoy sighting by Wallace Bailey, original director of Wellfleet Bay sanctuary, way back in 1957. There are two state records of hybrids between a Spotted and an Eastern Towhee, the first photographed at the feeders at my office on a day I wasn’t working – that still bugs me. These hybrid birds’ free-thinking parents apparently didn’t keep up with the ornithological literature.
So with that context, you can imagine the surprise of avid Cape birder Valerie Burdette back on Saturday when she found a towhee with a jacket of white spots at the Provincetown Airport. Thickets around this little airstrip are just inland from Race Point and represent the first dense vegetation for a bird coming off the water from the north, and thus boast a history of hosting nice birds. It was also the site of one of the most epic migration fallouts in Massachusetts history back in May of 2020. On Saturday Valerie first heard the unfamiliar catlike call, or rather catbird-like call, distinct from those of our Eastern Towhees. Eventually this rare, furtive visitor made itself available for confirmatory photos, but mostly just allowed occasional, quick looks and listens for a few dozen lucky birders over the ensuing few days.
That Spotted Towhee was last reported on Monday, but one hopeful Tuesday birder got a fantastic consolation prize - a male Pine Grosbeak that landed next to her car and posed for pictures. This once again confirms that rare birds beget other rare birds by drawing more eyes to an area. Pine Grosbeak is by far the rarest of the winter finches in a year where we aren’t supposed to be getting any winter finches. Apparently Provincetown didn’t read the Winter Finch Forecast, as birders there have seen White-winged Crossbills and Evening Grosbeaks over the last week plus a couple of different Pine Grosbeaks yesterday.
It may seem like the ends of the earth if you’re not an Outer Cape person, but P’town is always worth a trip, for birds or otherwise. While you’re out there, keep an eye out for Northern Harriers, which often patrol the dunes and airport fields this time of year. Just don’t call them Marsh Hawks or the younger birders will think you wandered off from the home.
