The Neglected Abundance Of Your Backyard

It started with a thump, the grim sound of a bird hitting the window of my little office shack. When I ran outside to check, I found the first hermit thrush that I had ever seen in our yard, lying dead in the grass. As I lay those few feathered ounces to rest beneath a rose bush, my sorrow was tinged with something like embarrassment. Here I was, studying nature and writing books about it, and I’d had no idea that this celebrated bird was wintering in the shrubs just a few feet from my desk.

In biology, hermit thrushes are renowned for singing two tones at once, phrasing their notes in precise harmonic intervals eerily similar to the minor chords and scales used in human music. The resulting song is so haunting and beautiful that it has become a powerful metaphor in literature, invoked by hundreds of authors and poets since before ornithologists even knew which bird was responsible.