Here is an infrequent visitor to my yard, this one’s a male Eastern Towhee

(Pipilo maculates) that stopped by on March 18, 2010, to rummage through

the dry leaves in the woods -- they seem to enjoy doing that.

© Bob Vuxinic

© Bob Vuxinic

This is the female of the

species; obviously, the

female is brown where the

males are black, otherwise

they are identical. This,

and all the rest of these

photos were taken during

our big snow and cold snap

of January 2011. Like a

number of other birds, the

snow seems to produce

them like magic.

After only seeing a couple Eastern Towhees for years, the yard was full of them during

the heavy snow of January 2011. But they all seemed to disappear as the snow melted.

© Bob Vuxinic

9 Jan 2011