Bicknell's Thrush

The song of the Bicknell’s Thrush emerged from the spruce trees in the half light of dusk.  I stretched out in my sleeping bag and smiled. Peter and I were on the summit of Plateau Mountain . I had a pad under my bag, to keep the damp cold away. Peter had travelled even lighter, and rested without a pad on the soft ground.

“Do you realize that there are only a few acres in the world where we could hear this bird?” he asked.

The Bicknell’s thrush is a geographically particular bird, nesting only in the Northeast of this country, and only at higher elevations.  For a while, some thought it lived only on the summit of Slide mountain, the highest peak in the Catskills. It’s a bit more adventurous than that, taking to a few of the peaks in the mountains, but always over 3,500 feet. The Bicknell’s Thrush winters on Hispanola (the Dominican Republic and Haiti). It’s range map is not a swatch, but a few dots.

Since the bird sings at dusk and dawn, to hear it’s song we had to either get up extraordinarily early, and hike up a mountain, or we had to have a little overnight adventure. We chose the latter. Camping is not allowed over 3,500 feet in these mountains. But clearly others had camped here before us—trees had been cut down, and a fire pit held charred logs. But I didn’t see this as camping but rather as a nap in the open air. After all, we had no tent or stove. We had packed sandwiches for dinner, brought water and our sleeping bags. The heaviest piece of gear was Peter’s 12-pound camera. (All photos of birds here are Peter's.)

We had left the trailhead at the end of Mink Hollow outside of Woodstock around 4 in the afternoon, and followed a stream into the hills. To one side loomed Sugarloaf mountain, to the other, the long flat summit of Plateau. We were both moving slowly, stopping to drink water and talk. It was muggy-hot, and we were both sweating. At six in the evening we had arrived at a lean-to, occupied by two parties, and a sign told us we had 3.4 miles to the summit of the mountain.

 (this photo is on the summit of Plateau)

The Bicknell’s is named for Eugene Bicknell who found the bird on Slide Mountain in the late 19th century (for a while it was thought to be the same species as the Gray-cheeked thrush, but it is a separate species). It’s an unremarkable-looking medium-sized thrush.  It’s the song that makes the bird so special. John Burroughs, the early 20th century naturalist wrote about it this way: “The song is in a minor key, finer, more attenuated, and more under the breath than that of any other thrush. It seemed as if the bird was blowing in a delicate, slender, golden tube, so fine and yet so flute-like and resonant the song appeared. At times it was like a musical whisper of great sweetness and power.” For describing bird song, Burroughs can not be beat.

In June 2009 I wrote a blog post about trekking up Slide Mountain in the Catskills in search of the Bicknell’s thrush. That I heard the bird but did not see it left me disappointed. Some birders are happy with just a sound (and check off a bird in their life list). I need to see the birds that I hear. Early in the evening a bird perched on a limb, not more than twenty feet away. It has that characteristic plump chest of a thrush, and eyes that look big, startled.  It’s throat was speckled brown. To see such a secretive bird is thrilling.

We dozed off near 9:30 and an hour or so later, the light of the moon shining in my eyes woke me. I listened to the wind in the trees, and hoped to hear an owl—a saw whet, in particular. The temperature dropped, and I hunkered down in my sleeping bag. The smell of spruce snapped the colder air and I thought it was fall, could hear winter coming on.  It’s June, I reminded myself.

The first sound I heard on waking was a white throated sparrow. Then a winter wren, its cascading song the most beautiful in the woods. They were soon joined by the Bicknell’s flute. We sat up, a bit groggy and pulled off the slugs that paraded across our sleeping bags.

(a blackpoll warbler)

The walk along the summit of Plateau mountain is long and flat. In the early light we saw and heard the yellow-bellied flycatcher, a small bird with an olive-yellow breast. Then a blackpoll warbler. “If these boreal species are here, where are the other ones?” Peter asked. That is, where was the boreal chickadee? Or even the black backed woodpecker? One more mystery of bird life. For all that we know about birds, it seems there is infinitely more unknown. The unknown makes me happy.

Back in the parking lot at noon, we admired the butterflies—red spotted purple and white admiral—whispering along the edges of the woods before packing up and heading to town to eat ice cream.