White-throated Towhee

The white-throated towhee is a large sparrow with a long tail, 18.5 to 22.5 cm (7.3 to 8.9 in) long and weighing 42 to 50 g (1.5 to 1.8 oz). The sexes have the same plumage. Adults of the nominate subspecies have a brown crown and nape. They have a white supercilium to the eye, some whitish below the eye, and a blackish stripe on the cheek. The rest of their face is brown above and chestnut below. Their upperparts and tail are brown. Their wing is mostly brown with white on the median coverts that shows as two wing bars. Their chin is white and their throat rusty cinnamon with white under it. The centers of their breast and belly are whitish mottled with gray, the sides of their breast gray, and their flanks and undertail coverts cinnamon. Juveniles have pale cinnamon wing bars and brownish mottling on the breast; they are otherwise like adults. Subspecies M. a. marshalli is duller and grayer overall than the nominate. Both subspecies have a reddish iris, a dusky brown maxilla, a paler brown mandible, and horn-colored legs and feet.

The white-throated towhee is a bird of pine-oak forest and montane shrub- and scrublands in the interior valleys of the Sierra Madre del Sur. Subspecies M. a. marshalli is the more northerly of the two; it is found in southern Puebla and perhaps into eastern Guerrero. The nominate is found from eastern Guerrero east to central Oaxaca. Sources differ somewhat on its elevational range. A twentieth century publication states it is 1,150 to 2,800 m (3,800 to 9,200 ft). A 2006 field guide places it between 1,000 and 2,500 m (3,300 and 8,200 ft). A 2020 source places it between 1,000 and 2,800 m (3,300 and 9,200 ft).

The white-throated towhee's diet has not been studied but is assumed to be primarily seeds and include insects and fruit. It forages on the ground and in low vegetation.