What bird says drink your tea?

The bird singing drink your tea is an Eastern Towhee, a black, rust and white bird of thickets and brushy edges in the eastern United States. The song is two quick notes and a trill, drink, your, teeeea, over in about a second. In the West the job goes to the Spotted Towhee, whose song is a long, buzzy cheweeeee that sounds rougher and less polite. Both towhees also give a questioning, catlike meewww? call.

Listen: the likeliest bird

This is one of the most widely used mnemonics in American birding, and the sources agree on it almost letter for letter. Audubon's field guide writes the song as drink-your-teeaaa. The Missouri Department of Conservation's field guide spells it drink your teeeeeee. Wikipedia calls it a short drink your teeeeea lasting about a second. The only thing that changes from one writer to the next is how long they hold the last vowel, which tells you where the action is: the ending stretches.

Take the words away and you are left with a pattern. The Missouri guide describes it as two whistled notes followed by a higher trill. Audubon adds that the song varies, often with a few notes up front and a long trill at the end, and that some birds come out closer to to-wheeeee. So do not count syllables too strictly. A short phrase that opens with clean notes and finishes in a fast, higher trill, coming out of low brush, is a towhee until proven otherwise.

Where you hear it, and the leaf kicking

Eastern Towhees live in thickets, overgrown brushy areas, glades, streamside tangles and the undergrowth of open woods. Audubon notes that habitat varies by region but is always brushy. Many southern birds stay all year, while most northern birds migrate. In Missouri, for example, the state field guide calls them common statewide in summer but uncommon to rare in winter.

Before you hear the song, you may hear the bird feeding. Towhees forage on the ground by hopping and kicking backward through the leaf litter with both feet at once, turning up insects and other food. If a patch of dead leaves under a shrub is rustling loudly and something says chewink, you have found your tea drinker. The Missouri guide also notes that towhee numbers have dropped as brushy habitat shrinks.

The western cousin: Spotted Towhee

Until the two were split, the Eastern and Spotted Towhees were considered one species, the Rufous-sided Towhee. Audubon's guide gives the Spotted Towhee's song as a long, buzzy cheweeeee and describes its songs and calls as more variable and much harsher in tone than the eastern bird's. The western song is a buzz more than a whistle.

In the West, Spotted Towhees fill chaparral, manzanita and scrub oak thickets and pinyon-juniper woods with a dense understory. Southern populations stay year-round, and birds from the northern interior spread onto the Great Plains for the winter. The two species overlap on the Plains, and rare hybrids turn up there.

How to tell which one you heard

• Clean notes, then a trill: Eastern Towhee. The drink and your are separate whistles, and the tea is a trill above them.
• A long, harsh buzz: Spotted Towhee, especially in western chaparral and scrub.
• Check the map. Eastern in the East, Spotted in the West, with a meeting zone on the Great Plains.
• Do not lean on the call. Both species give the same inquisitive meewww?, and the Eastern Towhee's rising chewink is often slurred.
• If you see it: the Spotted Towhee has heavy white spotting on its back and wings. The Eastern is plain black above in males and chocolate brown in females, with rusty sides and a white belly.

If the singer stays buried in the brush, Warble can listen for you and name it from the song alone.

Questions people ask

Warble is a game, not a field guide. Facts about birds on this page come from the sources above.