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Abert's Towhee | Melozone aberti
Zwartkintowie | Toquí de Abert
Abert's Towhee is a large, cinnamon-brown sparrow with a black face around the base of the bill that lives in dense shrubs along rivers in the desert. Most of its range lies in the south-western United States; in the guide area it occurs only in extreme north-western Mexico.
Voice
The call is a sharp, high peek, often repeated. The song is a series of peek notes ending in a dry rattle; pairs give a squealing, rattling duet when they meet.
Recording: Scott Crabtree — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · shortened to the first 60 s, mono · xeno-canto
Identification
21–23 cm. Plain cinnamon-brown, the underparts slightly warmer and paler than the upperparts, the undertail coverts rufous. A small black face around the base of the bill and on the chin. Bill pale grey to horn. Tail long and dark brown. No breast spot and no streaked throat. The sexes are alike.
Confusion species
Canyon Towhee Melozone fusca is greyer, with a rufous crown, a streaked buff throat and a dark breast spot, and lives on dry, rocky slopes rather than along rivers. California Towhee Melozone crissalis, further west in Baja California, is greyer brown, with a buff throat with fine streaks and no black face.
Habitat
Dense shrubs along rivers and irrigation canals in the desert: mesquite, willows, cottonwoods and tamarisk, also rank edges of fields and gardens in villages. It usually stays low and hidden. It searches the ground beneath shrubs for insects and seeds.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of Mexico and Central America.
Range and movements
South-western United States, mainly in the Colorado and Gila valleys. In the guide area only in north-eastern Baja California (Mexicali Valley and Colorado delta) and north-western Sonora.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
In the guide area best looked for in vegetation along canals and fields in the Mexicali Valley and in the Colorado delta; the sharp call often gives the bird away before it is seen.
Conservation status
Not threatened (LC). In the guide area local and scarce; it depends on riparian vegetation, which has declined greatly through water extraction and agriculture.
Scientific name
Melozone aberti | (Baird, 1852)
Baird described the species in 1852 as Pipilo aberti; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Melozone was introduced in 1850 by Reichenbach. Melozone is Greek, from mēlon 'cheek' and zōnē 'girdle, band', after the patterned cheeks of the type species. aberti honours the American army officer and explorer James William Abert (1820–1897), who collected birds in the Southwest. The specimen the first description was based on came from vicinity of Gila Bend, Arizona.