The day started cloudy and windless, then ended sunny, a wonderful change from the previous day’s chilling wind. The plan was to leave Princeton-by-the-Sea, walk to the base of the hill you see here, then to the top and along the ridge northward to Moss Beach.

Along the way we passed a marsh and watched water birds and at the jetty saw shorebirds. At the top of hill we got a great view of a quiet Mavericks, the famous surf spot. It was a beautiful start to the day.

But this post is about towhees and their cousins, the sparrows. During all four days of this birding walk we saw both. I’ve never been very interested in sparrows (I find them hard to identify), but I do like towhees, in particular, the spotted towhee (easy to identify and colorful). What I didn’t realize until this trip is that towhees and sparrows are in the same family (along with a few others) — they’re Emberizines (Family: Emberizidae). And, we saw many of both as we walked the Coastside Trail, including one species of towhee that wasn’t supposed to be on our route.

Here’s the family, with the sparrows first.
I saw the Savannah Sparrow on the first day and I had only seen one once before. The House Sparrow isn’t native (it’s Old World) and does well in urban areas, which is where we saw it. Throughout the walk White-crowned Sparrows were just about everywhere and Song Sparrow tunes were as pervasive.

Savannah Sparrow

House Sparrow

White-crowned Sparrow

Song Sparrow

You can see that there are differences among the four species.

What I find remarkable is how different the towhees are from the sparrows.

California Towhee

Spotted Towhee

And finally, the lost towhee — a Green-tailed Towhee. It wouldn’t be much of a surprise visitor in the sagebrush of the Sierras, but it is here along the coast, according to our guide Alvaro. I think it resembles both sides of the family — sparrows and towhees. What do you think?

Green-tailed Towhee

Seeing it in Moss Beach on the last day was a great treat. Sorry our trek had to end.

To Margaret and Clare of Slow Adventure and my fellow birders — awesomely great trip, and I look forward to the next one.

To Alvaro Jaramillo — great job and great information. I learned a lot.

And, to those of you who have been following me on this inn-to-inn coastside walking & birding tour — my thanks. You probably see that I’m no longer posting from my iPad. Mobile blogging was a great learning experience, but I really do prefer my Mac screen and keyboard for posts.

I took a lot more pictures on this trip and will be adding them to my blog over the next few weeks. Keep walking and birding, or however you enjoy the outdoors near you.