scratch and kick

Today at work I saw the first Fox Sparrows of the season.  These are great looking birds -- big, robust sparrows that scratch around in leaves for invertebrates and seeds.  At home this afternoon, I was happy to find another hard-scratching, leaf-flinging spring arrival: a beautiful male Eastern Towhee. One of my favorite birds.  Unfortunately, they seem to be declining, which was probably first documented in this paper by John Hagen of Manomet Center for Conservation Sciences.  I first learned to bird band at Manomet, back when it was Manomet Bird Observatory, and it remains one of my favorite places. Around here, urbanization has really taken its toll on towhees.  Not only has a great deal of habitat been lost, but the fragmentation of forest plots has greatly increased predation and parasitism rates.  In urban areas, outdoor cats in particular wipe out nests of this ground-nesting species.  Learn more about Eastern (formerly Rufous-sided) Towhees in the Nature Conservancy's management abstract.