A Towhee in the Snow

Along the Riverway Trail in Radford a few mornings ago, I observed a towhee kicking a thin slush off some berries on the ground. I watched it eat a few of them, each one wrinkly and reddish and pecked up from some ratty leaves mixed in the snow. The berries had fallen from a Morrow's Bush-Honeysuckle.

The towhee would look at the ground and keep on kicking in the leaves. I saw it peck at a snail shell. The shell crunched into several pieces, and the towhee ate these like a starved, caged sparrow.

A couple of minutes later, a grayish cat slouched in from nowhere. The towhee fluttered to the top of a nearby hawthorn, chewinking, and making other slurred chip notes. After a moment or so, the towhee flew away past a short and wobbly stretch of rusty fence wire. I could hear it chewinking near the riverbank. The cat then began to ease away in the opposite direction towards some weeds and a ditch.

I then walked down the trail a while to my car and went home. I hope in a few days to write more about towhees.

Notes:

• 1. Photo of this male Eastern Towhee is by Stan Bentley. He gave me permission to use it in this blog entry. The red berries in the picture are the fruits of Flowering Dogwood, one of the highest energy berries available for birds in the fall.
• 2. I wrote this entry in my journal several days ago when there was actually a little snow on the ground (a rather rare event the past couple of winters here in Radford). I had to get outside and play in the snow of course, traipsing to see what I could see. The towhee was silent and busy, and hungry, and easy to observe, until the cat showed up...then the towhee was quite vociferous for a few moments, and then invisible, but still complaining about the cat.
• 3. As I mentioned in a blog entry last year, I grew up calling the towhee by the name of "joreen". Stan tells me that he grew up using the very similar name, "jorink" or "jarink". I have heard a couple of other people in the NRV use this name for towhees.
• 4. I enjoy listening to towhees singing, and counter-singing during their declarations of territory in the spring. I have also learned that towhees will occasionally include the notes of other bird songs in their vocalizations, particularly the first note or two of a song. I have heard them imitating and including a song note or two from cardinals, the chip notes of both downy and hairy woodpeckers, and alarm chuck notes from robins, to mention a few.

Two local critter names

Over the past few mornings, I have met fishermen and waterfowl hunters at the boat landing in Riverview Park in Radford. We talk about most anything, weather, crowds, work situations, and eventually about the kinds of birds, fish, and other animals we have recently seen along the New River.

One waterfowl hunter was checking the area for Canada Geese. We watched one long skein of geese fly by us. The geese honked a little and circled towards a farm field. We talked about geese, and he mentioned that he had seen speckled bellies a couple of times between Radford and Parrott on the river. I asked him to describe the geese, and I realized that he was talking about Greater White-fronted Geese, a species quite rare in this part of Virginia.

Another morning a fishermen asked me what I was looking at...I was just watching a few tree swallows perched on the electric line that crosses the river near the boat landing. I told him that earlier in the day I had seen an otter. He mentioned that he saw otters frequently and sometimes river weasels. The latter was his name for mink.

For me it is a blessing to learn local names of plants and animals. In the past week, I have learned two:

Speckled Belly
River Weasel

Local Names for Birds, Part Two

I begin Part Two with a list of a few more local names for birds:

• Bull Bat, Common Nighthawk
• August Bat, Common Nighthawk
• Bee Martin, Eastern Kingbird
• Till & Teal & Teal-Mouse, Tufted Titmouse
• Jenny Wren, Carolina Wren, or maybe some other wren, (Bewick's Wren?)
  
• Thresh, Brown Thrasher
• Leaf Bird, Cape May Warbler (maybe other warblers, and vireos?)
• Pewee Bird, Common Yellowthroat
  
• Joreen, Eastern Towhee

I believe Bull Bat is used over the entire region by many speakers. Variants I have heard include August Bat, because as the speaker told me: "that's when they fly." I heard one speaker born in Giles County refer to the Common Nighthawk as Fall Bat, for the same reason.

When I was a kid I knew of several folks who would find a prominent place of nighthawk migration flight, and these men would aim their shot guns, sometimes rifles, and see how many they could kill. I don't know if any of these folks really believed these birds were bats, but that was the justification they used--sort of ridding the world of vermin I guess. Or maybe it was just an amusement for them. Right now I don't know of anyone who goes out hunting Bull Bats, so I guess that is a wee bit of progress. Of course, sad to say, the migration flights are nothing in number like they were fifty years ago, or even 25 years ago, when I could still see several thousand in an evening before sundown.

As for Bee Martin for Eastern Kingbird, I knew a couple of people who said that name, pointing out one perched on a bean pole. Sure enough it had a wasp in its bill.

I assume Till or Teal or Teal-Mouse is a dialect variant of Titmouse. The pronunciation is with a really long "eee" and some speakers say it with a glide that slides it into two syllables: "tee--eel". I know I have come home to my young time and place when I hear that name. Either that or a time warp is happening again.

I don't really know which wren people referred to when they said Jenny Wren but the only wren around was Carolina Wren. I believe the name came over from England, and there of course it must have referred to "THE wren" (aka, the Winter Wren, here). I'm just guessing, mind you.

Thresh is just a local variant on thrash, or thrasher.

I know a couple of people in Montgomery County, VA right along the New River who called the warbler we were watching a "leaf bird". It was pecking aphids very systematically from under the leaves of maples. The leaves were loaded with aphids, and the Cape May Warblers were chowing. They would just perch on twigs and peck and peck---this made for easy eating. One of the men said "this is what we've always called 'em" when I asked him about the name "leaf bird."
Actually this foraging strategy is quite typical of Cape May Warblers. It's a great way to glean food and store up energy for the long haul to the tropics, and the Cape Mays have already been traveling a long while before they get to our area in September.

The Pewee Bird is the one that started me bird watching at age five. My father showed me its nest. It took me several years to figure out what this yellow-breasted bird was. It also had a black mask. I eventually learned the book name---Common Yellowthroat. I sometimes tell kids this story, and I sometimes tell these kids that because it has a mask it is a bandit bird. I hope they know I'm joking.

The Joreen is a local name for the Towhee in Franklin County. I figure like "towhee" or "chewink" it is an echoic name for the towhee's call notes. I saw three Joreens in the catbriers in Radford this past Saturday, and they all said Joreen not Chewink. I guess the Eastern Towhee is my favorite bird, but ask me another day and I'll mutter something else is.

In a couple of weeks, I'll write a little about local names for insects.

Local Names for Birds, Part One

One day back in June 1984, my Uncle Dallas guided me through some of the farm lands where he was born near Woolwine in Patrick County, Virginia. I was participating in the Virginia Breeding Bird Atlas.

We both heard a Pileated Woodpecker cackling among some tulip poplars up ridge from us. He said, "that's an Indian Hen." My father had always used the name Wood Hen.

My Uncle and I searched some bottom land soggy places for a little while. He said he had seen baby snipe here many years earlier. I knew which species he was referring to....American Woodcock. It is also the species of much local lore and speculation in Franklin County and Patrick County, the most famous I guess...the snipe hunt.

A snipe hunt is a prank to fool a person who knows nothing about snipe or woodcock. As folks have described it to me:

you take the person out into the woods
you give 'em a sack to catch the snipe
you tell the person that you will drive the snipe to 'em
you go home and enjoy a coffee lace or other beverage
the person never gets a snipe in the bag
the person is left "holding the bag"

I know somebody that played that trick on his fiancee. She married the guy anyway. They're still married, now almost 60 years.

Below is a short list of a few species with field guide common name and the local vernacular. There are a couple of sad notions in my head as I write this blog: (1) the saddest: most of the folks who have shared these names are now quite elderly, or have died in recent years, taking these local names and much more with them so to speak, and (2) people who still use the local names, often apologize for using them, saying something like "I don't know what the book name is" or "I only know this name, not the book name."

My Uncle Dallas told me also that he could tell where folks were from just by their accent. Yeah, we can still do that. But what he meant was simply this: He knew a certain person was from Meadows of Dan by their Meadows of Dan accent, since he was from Woolwine...and the number of miles ain't very far between the two places. Transport, radio, TV etc has definitely reduced the number of our accents...but I digress, here's a first short list:

These are all local names I have heard people use in the New River Valley or in Franklin, or Patrick Counties.

Local name, Common name in field guides:

• Keel, Bufflehead
• Mud Duck, Pied-billed Grebe
• Blue Crane, Great Blue Heron
• Shytepoke, Green Heron
• Snipe, American Woodcock
• Yellow Hammer, Northern Flicker
• Indian Hen, Pileated Woodpecker
• Wood Hen, Pileated Woodpecker
• Baldpate, American Wigeon

The name Baldpate of course is in some of the older bird field guides, so one hunter may have been repeating a book name.

I'll post a few more local bird names with another entry soon, and then one about local names for insects.

Clyde Kessler