Swainson's (Magical) Thrush

These elusive troubadours have finally moved beyond their one-note, traveling vocalizations in my neck of the woods and are now reminding us how mystifyingly they can sing.

They’re harder than hen’s teeth to actually see; kinda like imaginary friends, guardian angels …and Bigfoot.* But you can hear them from a quarter mile away, those brief, upward soaring spires of crystalline sound. How they can throw their voices like ventriloquists and give that sense of spiraling and those echo-y reverberations in a woodland without walls is one of those lovely mysteries I am grateful to encounter again and again. Surely this is what fairy dust must sound like as it catches an uptwirling breeze.

For the first few days after their springtime arrival a week or so ago, all I heard were their ‘travelers’ peeps,’ pretty much that same peep you can hear as the first note at the beginning of each repeated ‘song’ in the recording above. It makes sense I suppose, if, while they are in transit mode they do not feel inclined to sing their ‘mate attraction’ and ‘territorial pronouncement’ song. Why set yourself up for a potential turf fight when you’ll be gone by tonight, anyway?

And now that they have found someplace to call home for the next several months, now that they are ready to pair up and raise a family, they pull out the good stuff, ‘set the table,’ as it were with the fancy china of vocalizations, announcing their musical prowess and their newly claimed territory of prime nesting sites.

Swainson's Thrush (Catharus ustulatus); every now and then you meet a singer who isn’t (at least in that moment), afraid to be seen by his audience.

I could not tell you how many times I’ve stared deeply into a bramble or up into a woodland canopy searching, searching for some hint of movement, some visual proof of life attached to all that sound. And while looking directly toward the place the music seemed to be emanating from just a moment ago, hear it moments later from someplace well away. “I swear, I never saw that bird fly…” I mumble to myself yet again, “and I know I didn’t blink. I was looking the whole time.”

Swainson’s thrushes are like that.

So yesterday, when a handsome male flew into my field of view, landed on a mossy branch and began singing right there in front of me, well it felt like a gift, a gift that went on and on for the next fifteen minutes as he flew from perch to perch, each within my sightline.

I have no doubt that he will become much more elusive again when he has attracted a worthy mate and has a nest and brood to protect, but for a little while, yesterday, under overcast skies, I was a able to kneel in the muddy trail and stand with arched back looking up, observing and picturing one of my favorite, feathered singers within a woodland cathedral calling out to the future in the hope of partnership …and something akin to love.

• (more on this subject, soon)