I hear the Hermit Thrush for the first time. Have I heard it before and not noticed? -- The Spring Arrival of the Hermit Thrush

April 16, 2017

 I hear the Hermit Thrush for the first time. Have I heard it before and not noticed?

Walking the dog just after 7 AM I notice that I am hearing a hermit thrush singing a call so familiar it seems like it had always been here.  The world can never be more beautiful. 

It’s hard to explain. I was present with the song until a moment when I noticed it. Then there was a flood of excitement and confusion whether the bird had been singing all along, or even yesterday. But clearly now later as I write, the bird has just first arrived. And, as I walk around the trails near the house with the dog this song both stops and starts —as the bird does not sing constantly— and the song also comes in and out of consciousness -- especially returning up the stairs, projecting my thoughts forward into the day and room ahead, the voice  comes to me again: it is here in my presence but I hear it only now. To hear without listening. To listen without hearing. To hear with the side of the ear.  zphx ~April 16, 2022 7AM

I am a body

connected to all bodies

awake in the world.

See \May 23, 1841 ("All nature is a new impression every instant"); April 5, 1860 ("Thus gradually and moderately the year begins. It creeps into the ears so gradually that most do not observe it, and so our ears are gradually accustomed to the sound, and perchance we do not perceive it when at length it has become very much louder and more general."); April 15, 1859 ("[W]hether he is conscious of it or not, that the world is beautiful and life a fair enterprise to engage in . . . If you yield for a moment to the impressions of sense, you hear some bird giving expression to its happiness in a pleasant strain. We are provided with singing birds and with ears to hear them "); April 30, 1856 ("I was trying to get the exact course of a wall thickly beset with shrub oaks and birches, making an opening through them with axe and knife, while the hillside seemed to quiver or pulsate with the sudden melody. Again, it is with the side of the ear that you hear. The music or the beauty belong not to your work itself but some of its accompaniments. You would fain devote yourself to the melody, but you will hear more of it if you devote yourself to your work."); January 12, 1855 ("What a delicious sound! . . .for it speaks to me too. I am part of one great creature with him; if he has voice, I have ears. I can hear when he calls.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, A body awake in the world.
I

The Spring Arrival of the Hermit Thrush

April 10. Hear my first hermit thrush midafternoon at the fort. vreee vreeen; then the song. Jane is looking at a trillium at the noisy stream and does not hear. April 10, 2021

April 10. I hear the vreeen call at sunset north of the house after a drizzly day, distinctly as a new sound and think hermit -- but no song.  April 10, 2024

April 12. The ice is out on Lake Champlain. April 12, 1856.  

April 12. This morning  it comes to me that I am listening to a hermit thrush while walking the dog. April 12, 2023

April 14. Hear my first hermit thrush of the season this morning before dawn on my way to work -- later I learn the ice is out of the Broad lake and it reaches 80° in Burlington. April 14, 2014.

April 14. Just at dusk we hear the hermit thrush ( I for the first time) and then later in Eastland its clucking sound. I have to be reminded it is the hermit.  April 14, 2017. 

April 15. Open the garage early this morning and hear the hermit thrush after a night of rain. April 15, 2019.

April 16. Jane says that hermit thrush is back. Not singing, but clucking. April 16, 2016

April 16. Coming home after our walk at dusk,  orange sky in the west, to end a perfect day, we first  hear the hermit thrush. April 16, 2016. 

April 16. I hear the hermit thrush singing it’s familiar song near the driveway first thing in the morning. April  16, 2022 

April 18.  Was surprised to see a wagtail thrush, the golden-crowned, at the Assabet Spring, which inquisitively followed me along the shore over the snow, hopping quite near. I should say this was the golden-crowned thrush without doubt, though I saw none of the gold, if this and several more which I saw had not kept close to the water. May possibly be the aquaticus. Have a jerk of the forked tail. April 18, 1854. 

April 19.  First thrush heard in the morning. April 19, 2015.

April 20. H. Mann brings me the hermit thrush. April 20, 1861

April 21. At Cliffs, I hear at a distance a wood [sic] thrush. It affects us as a part of our unfallen selves..  April 21, 1855

April 21, 2017. The hermit thrush loudly sounds it's vreeen note but does not sing.

April 21, 2018. At the top of the upper ramp Jane sees a hermit thrush.

April 24. Returning, in the low wood just this side the first Second Division Brook, near the meadow, see a brown bird flit, and behold my hermit thrush, with one companion, flitting silently through the birches. I saw the fox-color on his tail-coverts, as well as the brown streaks on the breast. Both kept up a constant jerking of the tail as they sat on their perches.  April 24, 1856

April 25. Hermit thrush is back! The first day. Perhaps five in one spot. Jane teaches me how to distinguish its  voice from the wood thrush. Aprill 25, 2009 

April 27. What a shy fellow my hermit thrush!  April 27, 1854

May 4.  Several larger thrushes on low limbs and on ground, with a dark eye (not the white around it of the wood thrush) and, I think, the nankeen spot on the secondaries. A hermit thrush?  May  4, 1855 

May 6. And on the way home at dusk the hermit thrush and Woodthrush (ee-oo-LAY) alternate.  May 6, 2017. 

May 7. A wood [sic] thrush which . . . betrayed himself by moving, like a large sparrow with ruffled feathers, and quirking his tail like a pewee,  on a low branch. May 7, 1852 . 

May 12. Hermit thrushes are still singing in the woods in the nearly complete darkness. May 12, 2016 

 

May 29. Dusk. We go out after the rain to find the Lady's slipper.  The woods are dripping wet, the hemlocks' bright new growth just beginning to show.   The hermit thrush sings . Along the cliff edge three Lady's slippers in bloom.  May 29, 2016

.

HDT needed brushing up on his thrushes, /See May 7, 1852 ("A wood [sic] thrush which. . .betrayed himself by moving, like a large sparrow with ruffled feathers, and quirking his tail like a pewee, on a low branch.”); May 22, 1852 ("On my way to Plymouth, looked at Audubon in the State-House. The female (and male?) wood thrush spotted the whole length of belly; the hermit thrush not so.”);; April 18, 1854 ("Was surprised to see a wagtail thrush, the golden-crowned, at the Assabet Spring,”); September 29, 1855 ("At Natural History Library saw Dr. Cabot, who says that he has heard either the hermit, or else the olivaceous, thrush sing,—very like a wood thrush, but softer. Is sure that the hermit thrush sometimes breeds hereabouts.”); April 21, 1855 ("At Cliffs, I hear at a distance a wood [sic] thrush. It affects us as a part of our unfallen selves..”); May 4, 1855 ("Several larger thrushes on low limbs and on ground, with a dark eye (not the white around it of the wood thrush) and, I think, the nankeen spot on the secondaries. A hermit thrush?);

 

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2022