13 January 2015. Burlington ON. The central premise of this site is that whenever I go birding, there’s always one bird that stands out as special, at least one that makes me say Wow!. Sometimes, usually because the bird is dramatically unexpected, the Wow! comes with punctuation and is capitalized. Frankly most wows are uttered under my breath; they’re still writeable birds though, as you’ll have noticed.
Today’s bird walk produced a Hermit Thrush, a Wow!-with-punctuation find. I had just completed a circuit tallying winter birds. These were truly winter birds, it was minus fifteen degrees Celsius with a light wind from the north. There was an inch or so of snow and the river was frozen over save for a couple of spots where the water churned too fast. In my notes, I twice recorded hearing the empty calls of American Crows, there were dozens of Black-capped Chickadees hoping for handouts of sunflower seeds and a few Downy and Red-bellied Woodpeckers.
Moments from returning to my car, I saw what I took, at first, to be a female Northern Cardinal fly up to the top of a scramble of Multiflora Rose briers. It didn’t look quite right for a cardinal so I binoculared (I promise not to try THAT again) it, and then came the Wow!
Hermit Thrushes are regular overwintering birds around here, but in small numbers and generally elusive. Why they stay I can’t imagine, they live on a diet of soft invertebrates, berries and fruits. In a deep freeze you’d wonder where they find any, I assume the meagre scattering of desiccated rosehips was the attraction to this bird. Hermit Thrushes, like their more fully migratory, cousins: Veerys, Gray-cheeked, Swainson’s, and Wood Thrushes are somewhat shy and retiring, bashful, they always seem to be looking back over their shoulder at you. And the expression seems a little doleful as if they wished that neither of us were there to see the other. None of the thrushes is particularly flamboyant, they’re more dignified in grays and browns as if they belong in the servants’ part of the house; not upstairs.
But why the Wow!? I suppose because at this hard part of the year they are few and far between, rarely seen, gentle souls and subtly attractive.
This photo from Wiki Commons is by Andy Reago & Chrissy McClarren.
Wow!
I like how the bag gives perspective on the bird’s size.
Tim Horton’s or McDonald’s?
I’m glad you didn’t shoot that one 🙂
A lovely story peter; you certainly make full use of your descriptive powers to enthral the reader with your sightings. Not a bird I know, and almost certainly have never seen, but I read your account as if i was standing next to you on the wintery wastes. By the way, getting cold here at night now with the temperature down to 12C and struggling to make the high twenties during the day! Now off to my local river in Torre del Mar to undertake a little binocularing!
Bob
Great prose regarding the “personality” and look of the Hermit Thrush! Well said!