The eastern towhee (Pipilo erythrophthalmus) is a large New World sparrow. The taxonomy of the towhees has been under debate in recent decades, and formerly this bird and the spotted towhee were considered a single species, the rufous-sided towhee. Their breeding habitat is brushy areas across eastern North America. They nest either low in bushes or on the ground under shrubs. Northern birds migrate to the southern United States. There has been one record of this species as a vagrant to western Europe: a single bird in Great Britain in 1966. The song is a short drink your teeeeea lasting around one second, starting with a sharp call ("drink!") and ending with a short trill "teeeeea". The name "towhee" is onomatopoeic description of one of the towhee's most common calls, a short two-part call rising in pitch and sometimes also called a "chewink" call. Taxonomy The eastern towhee was described by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in 1758 in the tenth edition of his Systema Naturae and given the binomial name Fringilla erythrophthalma. This species is now placed in the genus Pipilo that was introduced by the French ornithologist Louis Jean Pierre Vieillot in 1816. The specific name erythrophthalmus/erythrophthalma combines the Ancient Greek words ερυθρος eruthros "red" and οφθαλμος ophthalmos "eye". Four subspecies are recognised: P. e. erythrophalmus (Linnaeus, 1758), found in south-central and southeastern Canada to the eastern United States P. e. canaster (Howell, AH, 1913), found in the interior southeastern United States P. e. rileyi (Koelz, 1939), found in the coastal southeastern United States except for central and southern Florida P. e. alleni (Coues, 1871) found in central and southern Florida Description The eastern towhee is a large and striking species of sparrow. The total length ranges from and the wingspan is . The body of mass of this species ranges from , with an average of . Adults have rufous sides, a white belly, and a long dark tail with white edges. The eyes are red, white for birds in the southeast. Males have a black head, upper body, and tail; these parts are brown in the female. Juveniles are brown overall. Eastern towhees of all ages and both sexes generally are unmistakable and are not known to co-exist with the similar western spotted towhee. Distribution The eastern towhee occurs throughout the eastern United States and southeast Canada. Occurrences from southern Saskatchewan, southwest Ontario and Quebec south