Abert’s Towhee

So what’s the largest sparrow in North America? Like most questions, it’s a trick question, and the answer depends on definitions. If you take North America to be only that part of the continent north of Mexico, and if you take “largest” to refer to weight, and if you’ll agree with me that all emberizids are sparrows, then the answer is Abert’s Towhee.

Abert’s is a truly big bird, weighing nearly 50 grams, almost as much as, say, a female Pectoral Sandpiper. These massive sparrows are common in densely vegetated washes throughout their range, which is one of the smallest of any US sparrow’s: the bird’s distribution centers on the Gila River in Arizona and New Mexico, extending along the Colorado River and its tributaries into Nevada, Utah, and California.

Unlike most of the Arizona specialties, Abert’s Towhee is not a classic “Mexican” bird. This species is downright rare in Sonora, where it just barely follows the Santa Cruz and San Pedro Rivers on their looping courses south of the border; it also occurs at the mouth of the Colorado in Baja California Norte.

I’ve always felt particularly lucky to have a pair of this mega-sparrow in our yard. We live just above Pima Wash, a second-order tributary of the Santa Cruz, and somehow word got out that there was millet to be had at our place. I’d love to have been there to witness that first emergence from the wash: did they fly or did they scamper up the banks and across the neighbors’ yards? Knowing this species’ fondness for shade, I suspect that they slink-slank-slunked from hackberry fastness to hackberry fastness, probably over a period of several days.

Our pair has lost much of its innate shyness over time. They still flutter-flop into the thickets if I open a window, but it’s usually not long before they’re on the seed pile or the suet feeders again, reassuring each other with a long chattering duet that all’s well in towhee land.