The Hermit Thrush on Hermit Hill

a chance encounter with a Hermit Thrush becomes a moment I will never forget

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Like so many of my stories…

This is a story about a time I met a bird!

On our little homestead, every spring brings an outdoor-work season with a long list of projects. Year by year, we’ve cleared land and inched our way through farms and orchards and renovations and repairs and builds. And every year, we pick a project for fun for the family.

The back of our property is a few wooded acres, divided by a seasonal stream, and bordering onto the Downeast Sunrise Trail, a rails-to-trails project. It’s been a living dream for the kids to grow up wandering and exploring a little forest sanctuary, and to be able to launch longer excursions onto a trail for hiking and biking.

During our many forest wanderings, we often identify and name little special spots. There’s the Vernal Pool, home to our largest population of frogs and salamanders. There’s the Overlook, a dramatic hilltop that overlooks the stream above the bridge-crossing, and also hosts a very fast sled run in snowy winters. And along the Maple Syrup Trail, which forms a loop around all the best trees that we tap each year, we discovered another perfect spot.

Where two low ridges meet, there’s a gentle slope down to a wide bend in the stream. The hilltop is flat and mossy beneath towering trees, and there’s a sweeping view over the forest and the water below. It’s very peaceful. So one summer weekend, we got to work.

We cleared brush and trimmed dead branches and stacked firewood. We made a fire-ring, lined with stones that we carried up the hill from the stream below. We circled it with some stumps and some makeshift benches fashioned from planks and logs. We gently raked a large mossy area, just big enough for two tents. I figured we would probably call it Camp.

Except, as I rested on one of the low benches, admiring the fruits of our labors, I saw something out of the corner of my eye. Someone, rather.

He was a Hermit Thrush.

And he was wondering what I was doing in his territory.

Hermit Thrushes have an incredibly magical call. It’s like a warbling flute, rippling through the forest air along a strand of silk tied directly to the center of my heart. It’s one of the sounds that I miss the most in the winter, and am most delighted to hear when spring, and the Hermit Thrushes, return.

listen here (click the blue Listen button on the top right)

Hermit Thrushes arrive in our forest for mating season, and the males sing to declare their territory. They are forest-dwellers, often tucked away from easy visibility, seemingly shy. And yet, this Hermit Thrush was not easily startled, and seemed much more curious than worried about me.

He perched on a low branch for a long time as I watched him watching me. And then, he began to sing - but quietly. Like a whisper. And always ending on an up-note, like he was asking me something. And though I quietly assured him, in turn, that he was perfectly lovely and so sweet, it seems we couldn’t quite find a common language. He did, at least, decide that I wasn’t a threat, and so he returned his attention to his primary objective of the moment - hunting.

Hermit Thrushes have a distinctive, and thoroughly fabulous, hunting style. They tap the ground with their feet, which apparently distresses the little subterranean critters, who then give away their location by fleeing - only to be snatched by the lighting strike of a Hermit Thrush’s sharp beak.

It sounds sort of utilitarian - but wait until you see it in action. Hermit Thrushes have style!

We sat for a long time in near-silence on the low benches around our new fire ring, watching the Hermit Thrush work his way through the entirety of his newly-cleared territory. And it was extra-special to find a perfect spot and then find that it was within the domain of a perfect neighbor. And so we named our new spot Hermit Hill, in his honor, and whether we see him in person or not, he is there with us in memory every time that we visit.

They are so special, these little creatures with whom we share our world and our lives and our moments of captured attention. We stumble upon them, and if we will only let them, they unlock us. And we are forever changed.

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