Dan's Feathursday Feature: Hermit Thrush
During the COVID-19 quarantine, let me give you one good reason to hit the pause button on your binge watching of old Monty Python sketches, get yourself up off the couch, and head out the door for a walk around the neighborhood: the Hermit Thrushes are in town.
Whether you live in a spacious suburb or in the dark canyons of the South Loop, at this time of year, in a short walk around your neighborhood you’re sure to find at least one Hermit Thrush. It’s as if, just as we were getting the shelter-at-home notices, the Hermit Thrushes got the email that it was time to head north. When they come through, they come in waves, in surprising numbers. One day you see just one or two, and then the next day there are dozens. I saw my first of the year on April 2, and since then not a day has gone by without seeing at least three or four on my walks around the neighborhood.
You have to be looking for them, though, because even when close at hand, the Hermit Thrush can be hard to find. It’s a cousin of the American Robin, and its mannerisms are very similar to a robin’s. But the Hermit Thrush—true to its name—tends to be more, well, hermity than the robin. You usually won't see it brashly prancing on the open grass, as the robins do. More often, it will be skulking under bushes and trees, turning over leaves in search of snails, worms and insects. It loves to hunt in that border zone between the open grass and the dark safety of low growing shrubs, like yews and junipers.
The Hermit Thrush is also smaller than the American Robin, and more subdued in color, so if you are not looking for it, you may mistake it for a sparrow. When you flush one, it will probably flit up into a nearby dense bush—or if you’re lucky, to a low branch of a leafless silver maple—where it will promptly disappear. Its soft coloring blends in perfectly with just about any background. Don’t give up. Wait for a bit of movement, because the coolly secretive Hermit Thrush will often be given away by its rambunctious tail. It will push its tail down and try to hold it still, but the tail will pop back up—a mind of its own. Again the bird pushes the tail down, and again the tail pops up. Over and over, like the handle of an old hand-pump water well. Eventually the bird will tire of fighting with its own tail and fly off to a new place to hunt.
Subdued in color and manner, the Hermit Thrush is anything but when it sings. It has possibly the most hauntingly beautiful song of any bird in the Midwest. I can't think of anything more peaceful than sitting in a campsite in the pine forests of north Michigan at dusk on a quiet, windless evening while two or three Hermit Thrushes are singing. It's indescribable--not just the beauty of the song itself, but the atmosphere it creates in the woods. It literally turns the forest into a mystical place. The song of the Hermit Thrush is definitely on my list of things that every person should experience at least once while alive on this earth.
No one will be going to Michigan to hear the Hermit Thrush sing until this quarantine is over. In the meantime, to help keep yourself and your loved ones healthy in body and spirit, get out and look for that little bit of the north woods right in your neighborhood.
Dan's Feathursday Feature is a regular contribution to the COS blog featuring the thoughts, insights and pictures of Chicago birder, Dan Lory on birds of the Chicago region.