Swainson’s Thrush

So far in this pandemic I have been a part of the sourdough cultural revolution, the “now we workout outside” gang, the “now we workout inside while watching videos” group, I’ve homeschooled my child, I’ve made almost all my meals from scratch, I’ve spent way too much time on twitter, I’ve been reading a classic novel, I’ve been that guy who thought he would read more and catch up on all the books and then felt bad that he’s not reading enough, I’m that guy who thinks he’s going to “finally start writing that book” and didn’t even remotely come close to doing that, and now I’ve been that guy who has taken up birding.

I’m your basic middle-age American guy I guess.

Anyway, today I saw a Swainson’s Thrush. It’s an LBJ (little brown job) and not an exciting bird to see, really, unless there’s a good story behind it.

I heard it singing a few weeks ago, in the forest near my house. I’m lucky: I have a park that has a swamp, a pond, and a couple different types of forested areas, so I have a huge range of habitats for birds just a few blocks from my house. I’ve seen spectacular raptors like Cooper’s Hawks and Bald Eagles and lots of little brown birds like Song Sparrows and female Dark-Eyed Juncos.

But even in that diverse forest, this bird is unique because his song is odd; it sort of ripples and bows around you, and seems to echo almost like a pebble thrown into a pond in a canyon. Possibly abusing too many metaphors, another way I think of the song is haunting, or even sort of glassy, and slick.

Normally, If I sit still when I hear a bird’s song I can eventually find the bird in the trees – spot his movement, follow him along, and even sometimes snap a photo. But this one seemed deep in the woods, lurking over a homeless camp. More than once, I would hear his song, stop, and wait to see him move, only for a man to pop out of the trees and say “oh hey”. Or the other time when a couple of guys were walking along and they saw me standing still on the path, looking into the forest, and they got wide eyed – they looked at me like lobsters were coming out of my ears. I tried to explain “bird, listen” and they just thought I was weird. I get that a lot.

Constantly being interrupted and frustrated by the fact I couldn’t spot this little bird, I started doing some research. Sure enough there are a couple of apps which you can use to record bird songs for identification purposes. The one I settled on is free and it’s called Song Sleuth.

Bird songs have patterns and are easily identified by that pattern. Some people, people smarter than me, memorize thousands of these patterns and can identify bird by visualizing a sound that they hear as one of these patterns. But us regular folks can just use an app. That app can do the comparison for us.

I’ll probably get in trouble for admitting this but I recorded the song, analyzed it, and then what I did next is what I do to identify almost all of my birds: I play the song back to the bird over my phone’s speakers. A lot of birds are territorial and when they hear a competing male’s song, I have found that they will fly right at the source and check it out.

One Spotted Towhee I enticed this way flew straight at my head and then landed in a tree near me, showing me one wing after the other in some kind of display. Possibly to scare me off. A Bewick’s Wren did something similar, basically flying near me and singing so that I knew he was the owner of that bush. But others will just stare at you or fly around and look at you before figuring out that you’re not a threat: the Red-Breasted Sapsucker who lives in my park did that.

I use this as a form of positive identification. A Bewick’s Wren won’t react to a Swainson’s Thrush song because they aren’t competitors for mates (my theory anyway!). So, if I get a bird to react to me, to come at me (bro!) and sing, I know I have a positive identification.

That’s what happened when I played his song to the Swainson’s Thrush. An otherwise pretty secretive bird, he came out of the woods, flew near me, looked at me, perched above me, and sang back at me. It’s funny to say it but my heart was racing. After a few weeks of trying to find this little guy, there he was. Plain looking brown (olive) with a white chest and some little brown chevrons on his breastplate. It took me a few minutes but I was finally able to snap a photo. It’s not great in terms of clarity but I have to admit it was a lot of fun and I’m happy I got a decent photo.

Qq