Hermit Thrush visitor
Scenes in The
Hobbit aside,
thrushes are usually shy, so I was surprised when this Hermit Thrush
showed up in the yard Friday afternoon. Actually, I had forgotten
that we had a 
resident winter thrush, so I
was a bit concerned that the bird might have missed the boat on fall
migration. I looked up possible thrush foods, discovering that
insects are preferred but fruits are common in fall and winter, then
scattered raisins around the yard in case the thrush was starving.
Our thrush didn't seem
interested in my raisins, but it did spend half an hour hopping around
and pecking at our damp earth, presumably finding worms and
insects. How magical is it to have a Hermit Thrush taking the
place of a suburban Robin, wandering around the yard?
Our chicken waterer keeps our domesticated flock
happy and healthy as they enjoy a similar life, remembering to leave us
an egg now and then in thanks.
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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I feel overly compelled to not that maybe it's not a hermit thrush? Maybe it's a hybrid, newfangled, semi-hermit, just-a-little-shy thrush?
Thanks for your lovely photos! Any special song to listen for, that you can describe?
Have you been to see The Hobbit? I don't want to go, mainly because I don't want my own imagining of it to be confused!
Mom --- I keep wavering about seeing the movie, but I think I'm going to hold firm and keep the imaginings I have solid. Pretty funny that we're both staying away from the movie for the same reason.
The robin The Secret Garden is a British robin, which is very different from the American Robin --- not a thrush at all. That's why I thought about The Hobbit --- that thrush is probably a Song Thrush, which is in the same family as our robin and as our woodland thrushes.
The wood thrush is the one I hear singing much more than the Hermit Thrush (who mostly leaves this area for the summer, staying only at very high elevations). All of our woodland thrushes, though, have similar songs, a bit like elf-flutes.
The Wood Thrush has my favorite song of all birds!
Birds of a feather flock together
/ok really stopping now, promise, really