The Winter’s First Green-tail

While the rest of the northern hemisphere’s populace trudges on in the belief that it’s still summer, late August brings birders the first signs of the cool season ahead. Here in southeast Arizona, Lazuli Buntings, Western Tanagers, and Lark Sparrows are pouring through right now, but the true sign of winter is the first Green-tailed Towhee, a bird it seems like everyone has been reporting this past week.

My first was Sunday, sadly enough beneath the window at the WINGS office.

I hate to see a window kill of any kind, but events like this do give us the chance to look at some secretive birds up close. For me, this was the first in-the-flesh Green-tail I’d handled since my friend Alan and I helped Alan Storer at his banding traps in northern Utah–almost thirty years ago!

The attenuation of this individual’s outer tail feathers suggest that it is a hatching-year bird, just a couple of months old:

The contrast between the greenish greater coverts and the dull primary coverts confirm the age.

Sexing Green-tailed Towhees is more difficult without a scalpel. The wing chord of this bird was 75mm, within the overlap between males and females.

Quite apart from being able (or not) to age and sex the bird, a fresh corpse is also a fine chance to look closely at some of the plumage subtleties so often hidden or fleeting in a quick view of the living animal.

This view of the spread underwing reveals the secret of the colorful slit at the bend of the wing, common in advanced passerines. That “flash”–famously visible in Phylloscopus warblers and Aimophila sparrows–is produced by the yellow marginal coverts, which just peek out from under the folded wing.

Lots to learn and lots to admire with a bird in the hand. This one, poor creature, is now literally pushing up daisies in a flower pot out front. Hope my next Green-tailed Towhee is a living, breathing, skulking one, safe in the darkest recesses of a streamside thicket!