Is it this guy?

Here is a link that might be useful: towhee

annz,

You are my newest hero :-) This guy just tickles me the way he flits around and chirps at me and he's gorgeous. I'll forward this on to my sister in law. The milk can she is painting is really old, it was a gift to me from my late grandmother. It's actually going to be incorporated into my barbeque area which I'm remodeling.

Speaking of rufous....I was out by my pond today surveying what all I needed to do to remedy the lousy winter's damage when a little rufous hummer buzzed me and hovered about 3' from my face. He then proceded to lay right in the slowly trickling side of my waterfall and take a shower, in fact I almost thought perhaps I should have offered him a bar of soap :-) He then came back and hovered in front of me as if to ask what I thought I was looking at.

The towhees are beautiful. They make loud clicking sounds. They do often come in pairs. They are among the last feeders at dusk. They like to scratch about and find a variety of seeds. When the juncos are here they hang out together.

We have 29 bird stations around our house. All types of feeders and baths. Birds like running water. With over 300 trees, 5 creeklets and lots of feeders / bird baths / fountains / bubblers etc, we get a variety of birds, and expect more as the trees start to really grow. Wish I lived in an old growth surrounded habitat.

Once the towhees get used to you and know it's you who puts out seed, they will come peck n eat right in front of you. We have a bench in the front where there's lots of goodies and cover for birds and if we sit still out there the towhees will come within 6 feet and flit about and eat and drink and sing and click.

Glad I could be of help since you've given me advice in the past, plus, I'm a big fan of your beautiful garden!

The towhees are beautiful birds and we have a couple of pairs that hang out under the shrubs & conifers outside my kitchen window. They love millet and as cascadian said, they prefer to scratch while searching for the seed.

Like most other songbirds the male is more boldly colored. Notice his red eyes. Notice also these have short, massive bills. Orioles and blackbirds have slender bills.

annz,

How kind of you to say ;-) I have several more projects then I may finally be close to glimpsing the finish line, if anyone is ever truly finished what with the constant tweaking and all.

A couple of years ago, Thane (who posts on this site) decided he no longer had a place for a 6'tall Yaku rhody. I came up to get it and it was so big that it wouldn't fit in my truck so I had to go rent a trailer just to haul it. I had no idea where I was going to place it but I just loved the mature old thing. Anyway, I planted it in an upper bed and it has become the heliport for ALL birds who come into my garden. My buddy the rufous sided towhee in particular loves to hop from the fence to the rhody to the feeder and then to the ground below where he actually prefers to graze :-)

I had a pair of towhees here last year. In the spring, the male discovered his reflection in the window near my computer and for about 3 weeks he drove me crazy, trying to fight the reflected intruder in his space! He was MORE than persistant! In spite of my efforts to chase him off, he would not leave the window alone.

Nearly all animals have no sense of a self, are purely reactive. That's why a bird will attack its reflection endlessly: there is no "me" to be reflected. Even monkeys do this.

A chimp may act like it doesn't get it either at first, but eventually start looking at its teeth and doing other preening. This behavior would not occur if it did not realize it was looking at a reflection of itself.

Speaking of birds, I just had quite an interesting encounter. I am trying to incorporate some very nice used carob bricks into my BBQ which is already built into some very large rocks adjacent to my pond. It is very challenging to try and meld the two materials together. I am totally engrossed trying to figure it out and out of nowhere comes a loud whoosh and a thud and an immature yet still very sizeable bald eagle flopping around at my feet. I'm not sure what attracted him, perhaps my koi but maybe he dove, saw me and tried to swoop out. He flew right into the glass rail of my deck and knocked himself cookoo. I calmly talked him through it until the cobwebs subsided and he was able to fly off to hunt another day. You talk about an adrenaline rush!!!!!!

Here's a picture of the BBQ I was working on. I had just demo-ed the fake brick off the front when the eagle hit the glass panel on the deck stairs.

Here is a link that might be useful: {{gwi:1076099}}