Voice in the Brown Towhee

The Brown Towhee (Pip20 fuscus) has a fairly large, though not strikingly varied, ' repertoire of notes.It is the purpose of this article to survey these notes, with the exception of the male song which has already been discussed (Quaintance, Condor, 40, 1938:97-lOl), and to comment on their significance.Observations forming the basis of these statements were made chiefly on the towhees (P.f. petduns) in the vicinity of Berkeley, California, in 1937.The tsip note.-Themost familiar note of the Brown Towhee is the loud clear metallic chip or hip.This note may be given with monotonous regularity for as much as twenty-five minutes at a time.The frequency of the tsip note varies.Ten a minute may be given, but thirty is the most usual number.The tsip note is not necessarily correlated with activity, although it does announce the beginning of activity in the early mornings and again, the cessation of activity in the evenings before the towhees go to roost.On the other hand a towhee may tsip for fifteen minutes without any activity.In flight it may give several hips or none at all.An emphatic tsip may announce the take-off, and a tsip or two may be given upon alighting from a flight.A towhee may tsip on the ground while it is foraging, or it may forage for minutes without giving a sound.Frequently, in the nesting season, the tsiping is done from a high station such as the top of a laurel tree, or thirty or forty feet up in a eucalyptus, or from the peak of the highest available house or telephone pole.The general tsip note seems to have different functions.It may serve as a contact note between birds, especially birds of a pair, as a protest note, or as an alarm or warning note.Further study of this note may yet resolve it into at least three different notes corresponding to the behavior induced.In other words, although the tsip may sound the same to us, the variations in manner of delivery or loudness may have meaning.The tsips of a female disturbed at the nest are immediately answered by her mate and if her notes become hurried and excitable, he may come racing in to her side, no matter what part of the territory he may be in.Both birds may then utter loud tsips of protest at an intruder.This protest note invariably brings neighboring towhees close to the nest in disregard of territorial boundaries.Birds of other species are also attracted to the region of the nest in apparent curiosity.The Spotted Towhee, the Western Flycatcher, the English Sparrow and the Robin have been found to come.The t&k note.-In the nesting season the tsip note of the adult often takes on a tsink sound; it then has an extremely rapid tempo.One adult towhee, with young probably under cover, gave over eighty to a minute (May 13).Another gave ninety-seven in one minute.Both the tsip and the tsink variation are effective in controlling behavior of the young.For instance a male parent gave these notes sharply to hush the hunger notes of its fledgling which "froze" at once.Even at the age of forty-three days a fledgling "froze" at the warning tsip of its parent.Banded nestlings eight or nine days old, when released on the ground, followed the tsips of their parents to cover.The rapid tsink, besides acting as a warning to the young, probably warns the female if she is on the nest.The tssp note.-There is another variation of the tsip note, a much softer one which is less audible to the human ear.It is an aspirate tssp or tss.Hunt (Condor, 24, 1922 : 203) wrote that it is "a faint high attenuation of what we may call the family ' tseep' of the Fringillidae, some version of which is found in most of the sparrows."