California Towhee
Melozone crissalis
California Towhee · San Diego · 6 March 2026
A California Towhee at the edge of a garden bed in San Diego, scratching through the leaf litter, which is where it spends its life. It is a California and Baja endemic, found nowhere else, non-migratory, and usually seen alone or in a pair at the edge of chaparral rather than in the open.
Plain grey-brown all over but for a warmer rufous wash under the tail, a stout seed-cracking bill, and not much else - often described as one of the least distinctively marked birds in North America, which is itself the identifying feature. I'm reasonably but not completely confident on this one; nothing in the frame rules out a young sparrow of a plainer species.
Birds, insects, plants and other wildlife, mostly from Brooklyn, with some from further afield.
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