Our Super Bowl Pre-game show: the hermit thrush

My sister asserts that today, Super Bowl Sunday, is the best day of the year for skiing, hiking, eating out, shopping, etc. I am with her -- I would love to spend the day having local parks and trails to myself, but I am married to a football enthusiast. Actually, I'm not sure if "enthusiast" is the right word. Jeff has followed football all his life, typing letters to the "Steel Curtain" era Pittsburg Steelers when he was a little boy. He still has the autographed photos he received in response. But these days, he seems to get his football needs met mostly by watching game highlights online. Occasionally he (or we) will go to a restaurant or bar so that he can watch a game of particular interest to him, since we don't have a television.

I realize I could go do my own thing today, but over the years Jeff and I have developed a tradition of going to Virginia to watch the game, eat junk food, and spend the night with some dear friends of ours. Up until a few years ago, this evening would have included some pretty heavy drinking for me. I've now been sober for three years, and this year for the first time, one of my friends will be joining me in celebrating, as he would say, "Sober Bowl."

I've been able to spend this winter morning the way I like to: in quiet laziness beside the fire, alternately reading the paper and looking out the window at our birdbath, which I knock the ice out of every morning and replenish with warm water. I share my grandmother's love of watching birds in the bath; the messy exuberance of their bathing is a pleasant contrast to their dainty drinking.

There is almost no limit to what a birdbath will attract. A quick google of "birdbath visitor" will reveal photos not only of myriad bird species, but also of cats, deer, raccoons, bears, and foxes. Since last summer, we have seen at our bath: bluebirds, robins, titmice, chickadees, mockingbirds, cardinals, white throated sparrows, blue jays, mourning doves, grackles, starlings, various finches, the list goes on. Recently I've seen new visitors to the bath: cedar waxwings and a hermit thrush. Both are, as my dad once said about waxwings, "beautiful in their quiet way." I learned much of what I know about birds from my father, who died in 2007. He was like those understated birds; a neighbor of ours said not long ago that she missed my father, that he had had a "quiet elegance about him." He was patient and stoic, which made him a wonderful birder, able to be still for long enough to observe their songs and behavior.

White Throated Sparrow, my photo

My father sometimes took me on birding walks in the morning before school. I was something of a budding naturalist, poring over books about insects, geology, plants, and of course, birds, but my brain worked differently than his. I am what I call a "binge learner." While he was calm and resolute, my own mind was like a hummingbird: zooming from one source to another, drinking deeply and greedily, then moving on. Still, repeat this process again and again, and one can acquire a certain amount of knowledge over time. I did manage to learn quite a bit on our walks, and every time I make a new bird discovery, I think of him.

I don't know if the variety of bird species I've seen over the past year or so is the result of birds being displaced by development and seeking refuge in our neighborhood, which is wooded and bordered on two sides by water, or if I'm becoming more observant because of age, or because of sobriety. People in recovery claim that the "fog" continues to lift as the years go by. Maybe it's a combination of these factors. I do know that bluebirds used to be a rarity in our area, and now I see them regularly. Bald eagles are also becoming more populous as they continue to bounce back from the effects of DDT, which was banned in the US in 1972, the year of my birth. Also, in the past couple years, I've been able to apply myself a little more diligently to things I care about, though I still have a "binge" approach toward learning. This spring I spent every morning on the back steps with binoculars and the Roger Tory Peterson bird guide my father gave me some 30 years ago, shivering in the cold, later, sweating in the heat. Eventually I was driven inside by the mosquitos, but during this obsessive time, I was able to identify many species of warblers, some of which I had never seen before. I also saw and heard indigo buntings in our yard. I fixated on listening to and spotting scarlet tanagers so intensely that their raspy song became woven into my morning dreams -- something about tanagers doing yoga?

Thrush song elicits a visceral thrill that stops me in my tracks; the memory of heat; of humid, tangled forests; a sense of yearning. Often described as "flutelike," their melodies echo and spiral through the woods on warm spring and summer days. Their songs contain clean breaks between notes which remind me of a skilled Hawaiian ha'i (falsetto) singer, and end with an otherworldly trill. There's a precision that sounds almost digital, like little R2D2s singing from the treetops. They are related to the American robin, whose song contains mere suggestions of the flute tones of the thrush.

Earlier this week, I noticed a solitary, plump, soft-hued little bird on our birdbath. I grabbed the binoculars and started eagerly noting possible field marks: pink legs, streaked breast, its tail ruddier than the soft brown of its back. The bird flitted over to a wood pile not far from our living room window, then foraged on the ground under our hemlock tree, picking seeds or berries out of the leaf litter. It made its way over to the grass near the birdbath where it sunbathed for a long while, facing directly into the brilliant afternoon light. It was so windy that its feathers stood on end at times, lifted by bitter northwesterly gusts. The maps in the back of the Peterson guide book confirm that hermit thrushes winter much farther north than other thrushes. I have seen this thrush every day since I first noticed it at the birdbath. True to its name, it always shows up alone.

"HermitThrush63" by Albuttlee at English Wikipedia. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HermitThrush63.jpg#mediaviewer/File:HermitThrush63.jpg

Aside from the obvious allure of the hermit thrush's song, I also feel an affinity for the shy nature of this bird. I have hermit-like tendencies myself. I can also sympathize with its apparent hunger for the winter sun. All weekend, I have holed up in front of the fire in preparation for tonight's socializing over the Super Bowl. Jeff, who has developed his own love for birds, as well as an admirable skill for spotting them, has been in his home studio, working on his latest paintings. He missed yesterday's thrush visit, but to my delight, he finally saw it this morning. He dubbed it "the perfect Super Bowl pre-game show." I could not agree more.