Gossiping Finches

Goldfinches are fun to watch and to listen to. Over the summer the males flaunt such a bright yellow hue that your eye cannot help but follow one when it flies by. They are very cute, and their antics—when a group of them forms—are comical. But they also are fun to listen to, as they gossip softly among themselves.

Most of our birds call out in a solitary voice—shouting their song to the four winds in an elaborate display of bravado and testosterone. They are either warning potential rivals to stay away or cockily showing off their vocal talents. Goldfinches, however, are more likely to gather in a group and gently gossip. Both males and females participate in this arboreal klatch. You hear a calm, melodic chattering back and forth—what my bird book calls “soft contact notes.”

It’s easy to overlook their discussions, as they are quiet and sweet. A crow’s raucous call is far more likely to grab your attention. I paused the other day, as I became aware of a gathering of gossiping finches in the woods. They are a small bird, and against the fall yellow leaves I was unable to spot them, so I tuned into their chattering.

At first their jabbering sounded random and arbitrary, but as I listened I could discern an ebb and flow to the chatter—almost a kind of message, or a call-and-response process. It seemed as if they were not mindlessly yakking, but even listening to each other and responding. It was as if I were transported to Greece and overheard a group of folks carrying on a conversation on a street corner, where I could follow the tone but not the meaning. I even began to imagine what their finchy conversations might be about, but stopped myself from going there. One can go a little overboard in the anthropocentric projection game.

After a few minutes it seemed as if three voices came to dominate the conversation. I think I was able to distinguish three distinctive styles of “soft contact notes.” Then, still unable to spot the finches, I heard one of the three voices move off deeper into the woods and fade away. The other two voices soon did the same, slowly decaying into the forest. Did I really hear what I think I did? Was I really able to discern individual birds and were these finches continuing to call as they flew off?

I consulted one of my bird books and read that finches are one of the few species of birds that emit flight calls, and that these calls are “distinctive enough that one can identify individuals.” They have a “wide repertoire of songs that are learned, rather than innate.” So I was hearing three individual birds who then flew off, continuing to sing! There’s a thrill I get when I am able to distinguish individual animals, rather than have them all look and sound the same. It brings them closer to me.

A Bright March Towhee

Walking by the garden recently, my attention was grabbed by a noisy rustling in the dull, dead leaves. A bird flew up, a flash of red caught my eye. In a moment I realized it was a towhee—a friend I hadn’t seen for a couple of decades. Where had this beautiful bird been all this time? The population of songbirds has been precipitously falling in recent years, due to human activities. Was this the reason why I hadn’t seen a towhee for so long? Are they getting rare and this sighting might be my last?

The Eastern towhee is described in one of my bird books as a “large New World sparrow.” Like some other cousins in the sparrow family, towhees forage on the ground. They use a “double-scratch” method of kicking both feet back simultaneously to expose bugs. Quite unlike the single-leg, more dignified and regally-paced scratch of a chicken, a towhee really gets into its dance—which is why it noisily caught my attention.

Back in the 80s, when I last spotted this bird, it was known as a rufous-sided towhee. The taxonomy of songbirds has been shifting in recent years, as DNA analysis and more acute observations have become available. It’s tough to follow a little songbird around the woods and note its habits. A recent breakthrough in this area has placed miniature transmitters on these birds, so they can now be tracked.

The towhee’s back and head are black; it’s belly is white. Sandwiched between these stark penguin colors are bright rufous sides. I think rufous is a bit of a tame word. I would be inclined to call it “screaming burnt orange,” especially when spotted in dull March, when the bird creates a racket among dead brown leaves on a still morning.

As another tidbit of a towhee taxonomy shift, New England towhees are red eyed while those south of Georgia have pale yellow eyes. (I didn’t get close enough to this guy to note the color—or whites—of his eyes.) These were once thought to be separate species but now they interbreed in the Carolinas. (Resulting in orange eyes, maybe to match their sides?) During the Pleistocene period Florida was an island and some towhees apparently became isolated there and their eye color morphed to yellow. Now they are mixing again. Darwin would love it.

I hope that my sighting of the towhee means that it’s making a comeback—at least a come back to our woods. It’s scary to think of where this human-caused collapse of songbird populations might be going. We need our feathered friends—both for the useful niche they occupy in the environment (read: bug eating) and for those flashes of beauty that cause our souls to soar.