Cool fact: At one time, the Eastern Towhee and the closely related Spotted Towhee from the western United States were known collectively as the Rufous-sided Towhee. Today, they are considered separate species.
The Eastern Towhee is a bird that calls either its name, towhee, or the vernacular expression, chewink. The distinctive song typically has two introductory notes—the second lower in pitch, followed by a higher pitched trill. It sounds much like drink your teeeeeee.
This large, long-tailed sparrow, which is seven to eight inches in length, is a common and sometimes secretive denizen of thickets. Typical habitat for towhees is undergrowth and the brushy edges of open woods. Young jack pines or second-growth oak forests are favored in the Northeast, whereas southern birds seek scrub oak or palmetto. In these haunts the Eastern Towhee searches for insects and other invertebrates, as well as seeds and berries, with a characteristic scratching behavior. These towhees make a short jump forward and then scratch back with both feet at once to uncover their food.
The Eastern Towhee prefers the mid stages of plant succession, from field to forest. This species benefited when forests were cleared in the last century, because appropriate habitat was created. Currently, however, populations in the Northeast are waning as the land reverts to mature forest.
During winter, northern populations migrate, but southern birds are typically permanent residents. Groups of wintering towhees may join foraging flocks of mixed species, accompanying Dark-eyed Juncos, White-throated Sparrows, Northern Cardinals, and Tufted Titmice.
Description: The pattern of the dark upper parts and hood, the rusty orange flanks, and the white belly make the Eastern Towhee a distinctive and easily recognized bird. In males, the upper breast, head, back, wings, and tail are black, but in females the same parts are warm brown. The white base of the primary feathers creates a "speculum" on closed wings, and the outer primary and tertial feathers of the wings have white edges. The tail has white edges and corners, and the undertail coverts are buff in color. The iris of the eye is bright red in northern birds, orange to orangish white in the Towhees of coastal Georgia and northern Florida, and yellowish white in central Florida birds.
Cool fact: Brewer's Blackbirds are colonial nesters that sometimes practice polygamy when a surplus of females are available. Even so, primary pairs are formed. They reunite each spring after spending the winter separately in migrating flocks.
This robin-sized blackbird is a common breeding bird in open and semiopen country throughout the western United States and southwestern Canada, ranging east through the northern Great Plains to the western Great Lakes. This blackbird inhabits a variety of scrubby habitats, especially those near water. Nesting takes place near favored feeding areas in colonies that number anywhere from three to one hundred pairs. These blackbirds build their nests almost anywhere—they’ve been found on the ground and as high as 150 feet up in a tree.
Brewer’s Blackbirds prefer to eat invertebrates (when they’re available), and they feed their nestlings a diet that is 90 percent insects, especially dragonflies and damselflies. Seeds and berries are also eaten. Brewer's Blackbirds may hunt aquatic insects by wading up to their abdomens in water or even by hovering over water. Outside of breeding season, flocks are formed, sometimes with other species of blackbirds. In the northern parts of the winter range, the Brewer's Blackbirds in these flocks are most likely males, because the females have migrated farther south. The winter range extends from Washington State across the Southwest and across the southern United States to Florida.
An opportunistic bird, the Brewer's Blackbird takes advantage of food waste generated by people, industry, and agriculture. The changes brought by man have benefited the Brewer's Blackbird, as it has increased its range and abundance with the spread of agriculture. Foraging flocks in plowed or irrigated fields eat large numbers of caterpillars, beetles, bugs, grasshoppers, and other destructive agricultural pests. At other times waste grain is consumed. While walking on the ground, this blackbird bobs its head forward in a distinctive short, jerky motion.
Description: A male Brewer's Blackbird is wholly black, but in good light a purplish iridescence on the head and a more greenish sheen on the back can be seen. The female's upperparts, wings, and tail are a dusky brown that sometimes exhibit a faint green gloss. The underparts are lighter gray with a paler supercilium and throat. The eye color of each sex differs: the male's iris is bright yellow, the female's is brown.
To confuse the Brewer's Blackbird with the similar Rusty Blackbird (Euphagus carolinus) is a common mistake. The Rusty Blackbird inhabits the wet forests in northern Canada and winters throughout the southeastern United States. The head of the gray-black breeding Rusty Blackbird male has a greenish rather than a purplish sheen, and in winter, the feather tips across the body and especially on the wings of both sexes are tipped with a rusty color. Both male and female Rusty Blackbirds have yellow eyes and longer bills than do Brewer's Blackbirds.
The cowbirds (genus Molothrus) can be distinguished by their heavier, almost conical bills, and brown or red, not yellow, eyes. The Common Grackle (Quiscalus quiscula) has similar coloring to the Brewer's Blackbird, but it can be distinguished by its longer tail and bill.
Cool fact: Pine Siskins are the most frequently encountered member of the irruptive winter finches—a group of finches that breeds in the northern portions of North America and periodically stages major winter invasions into central latitudes of North America. These incursions may occur for lack of food in their typical wintering areas.
Pine Siskins are approximately 5 inches (13 centimeters) in length. A small streaky finch with a pale, thin, pointed bill, Pine Siskins have dark wings and a tail that has a variable amount of yellow.
The Pine Siskin is a highly social bird and can often be found at feeders in large flocks or mixed with winter flocks of American Goldfinches. The distinctive single- or double-note flight call of the Pine Siskin is often heard throughout North America in the fall.
Description: The head, throat, and nape of Pine Siskins are buffy and finely streaked with dark brown. They also have an indistinct dark brown eye stripe. From the mantle to the rump, Pine Siskins are buffy and broadly streaked with dark brown. The underparts are whitish and finely streaked with dark brown. The wings are primarily blackish in color, with the median coverts having buffy edges; the base of the outer primaries is broadly marked with yellow (on males) and buff (on females). The black tail is notched, and the outer tail feathers have yellow bases.
A single race of Pine Siskin, Carduelis pinus pinus,breeds from southern Alaska through Canada to Newfoundland, and south to northern New England. Year-round, their range extends from Alaska through the Rocky Mountains to northern Arizona.
Pine Siskins are irregularly common to abundant in their breeding areas—in other words, one year they might be found in abundance at a particular location, whereas the next year they are totally absent. They are also an irregular migrant, occasionally staging massive irruptions into the middle portions of North America, which can extend as far south as central Florida. These irruptions may be related to fluctuations in their food supply, which consists of seeds and buds from conifers, birches, and alders.
Cool fact: Male and female Downy Woodpeckers use separate foraging strategies during the winter. Males tend to feed in the tops of trees on branches that are smaller in diameter, whereas females feed in midlevel and lower sections of the tree on branches that are larger in diameter. Males aggressively maintain this segregation by chasing away any bird that attempts to feed near them.
Downy Woodpeckers are approximately 6.5 inches (16 centimeters) in length. A relatively small woodpecker with a short, chisel-shaped bill, Downy Woodpeckers have plumage that is a sharply contrasting pattern of blacks and whites.
The Downy Woodpecker is the most common North American woodpecker, and also the woodpecker reported most frequently by Project FeederWatch participants. During the 1996-1997 Project FeederWatch season, more than 69 percent of the participants reported Downy Woodpeckers, making them the fourth most common Project FeederWatch bird.
Description: Downy Woodpeckers have a black forehead and crown; males have a red patch on their nape (see drawing below), whereas females have a white patch on their nape. A wide white supercilium with a broad black band extends through the eye to the ear coverts, then down the neck. The lores, beneath the eye, and the sides of the neck are white. The black moustachial stripe extends to the neck. The chin, throat, and undersides are white. The lower neck, sides of the mantle, rump, and uppertail coverts are black. The back is almost entirely white. The upper coverts and flight feathers are black with large white spots. Variation exists in the extent of these white spots on the wing: Pacific Northwest, southwestern, and southern races show little white on the wings. The upper tail feathers are black, with all but the central feathers having white tips, which increase in amount toward the outertail. The typically prominent black bars on the white outer tail feathers vary in size. The undertail coverts are white with black spots.
The Downy Woodpecker breeds over a widespread area encompassing most of North America, except for the extreme Southwest and areas below treeline. Six recognized races of Downy Woodpeckers exist. These races are distinguished by
•size—northern races are larger
•amount of white on body—Alaskan and northwestern Canadian races are very pale overall
•lack of white on wing—northwestern and western races have little white on their wings
Confusion with Hairy Woodpeckers. The range of Downy and Hairy
Woodpeckers overlaps 
across
North America. Both are black-and-white woodpeckers, but they can be easily
discriminated (see drawings to the right).
Downy Woodpeckers are smaller.
The Downy Woodpecker's bill length is shorter than its head, whereas the Hairy Woodpecker has a bill that is equal to or longer than the length of its head.
Hairy Woodpeckers have a black comma extending to their upper breast, whereas Downy Woodpeckers do not.
In the East, Downy Woodpeckers have spotted outer tail feathers; outer tail feathers on Hairy Woodpeckers are entirely white.
Cool fact: Declines in northeastern Purple Finch populations, especially in suburban areas, may be correlated to competition with expanding introduced populations of the closely related House Finch. Similar declines in suburban Purple Finch populations in the first decade of this century were attributed to expansion of the House Sparrow, another introduced species.
The state bird of New Hampshire, the Purple Finch is a bird of coniferous and mixed forests, as well as park-like areas, breeding in the northeastern United States, across southern Canada, and in the Cascades and western Sierra Nevada ranges of the West Coast. Males sing from habitual song posts often located at the very tops of conifer trees. Nests are most often found far out on horizontal branches in conifers and are made of concealing material. Food consists mostly of seeds, buds, blossoms, and fruit, usually taken from the outer branches of trees and occasionally from the ground. Purple Finches display strong site fidelity to breeding areas, but in winter, flocks of Purple Finches may range widely, depending on local food supplies, and a wider variety of habitats is used. In the East, Purple Finches stage winter irruptions biennially, probably in response to cyclical variations in food supply. Western populations exhibit an altitudinal migration, moving to lower elevations in winter.
Description: A plump, sparrow-sized (5 1/4" to 6 1/4") bird with a deeply notched tail and short conical beak, Purple Finches are named for the raspberry-red color of the males. The raspberry color is deepest on the head, nape, face, throat, breast, flanks, and rump. The hindneck, back, and scapular feathers are deep red streaked with brown. Wings and tail are brown and the belly and undertail coverts are white.
Females are quite different, lacking any red color. The head is pale
brown, with fine dark streaks, 
and
a dark ear patch separating a broad white suprecilium and a white moustache
stripe. The white moustache stripe is separated from the white of the throat
by a brown malar stripe. Back and scapulars are brown and streaked; the
rump, tail, and wings are also brown, but unstreaked. Throat, breast, and
flanks are white with heavy brown streaks. The belly and undertail coverts
are unstreaked white. First-summer males are similar to females but with
head and rump washed in olive-yellow and deep yellow on chin and throat.
Males in this plumage may sing and hold territory before molting into adult
plumage in their second fall.
Two other finches in the Carpodacus genus might be confused with the Purple Finch. The very similar Cassin's Finch (Carpodacus cassini), a western bird found in the higher elevations of coniferous forests, is slightly larger. The red color of the male Cassin's head does not carry onto the hindneck as it does in the Purple Finch, and the belly, flanks, and undertail coverts are finely streaked with brown. The red of the breast is more extensive in Purple Finches. Female Cassin's Finches lack the dark ear patch and white facial stripes of the female Purple Finch and have a more finely streaked throat, breast, and belly, with the streaks extending onto the undertail coverts.
The red color of the slimmer and longer-tailed male House Finch (Carpodacus mexicanus) is limited to the forehead, supercilium, throat, and rump, and it has bold brown streaking on the lower breast, flanks, and belly. Female House Finches lack the strong facial pattern of the Purple Finch and are more diffusely streaked.
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