Hylocichla mustelina

Imagine. While we are sleeping, sitting in traffic, writing about Asia and generating pie graphs (who me?), there are hummingbirds flying over the Gulf of Mexico. Thrushes, vireos, hawks--they've been flowing north for weeks now and showing up in time to eat all the juicy bugs that are just beginning to hatch out. It's all happening right now--and once again as with every year I can't remember being more grateful for the arrival of spring.

Technically it's been spring for a month now; leaves have unfurled, flowers are blooming, some have already peaked, and a grayscale landscape is suddenly in full color--I've been drunk on green for weeks. But for me the action really begins when the migrants arrive. Sure enough, yesterday on my daily morning prowl I had a mini-reunion with two favorites: a wood thrush and an Eastern towhee. The towhee (aka the noisy leaf litter rhino) was kicking and skipping and rustling through the underbrush near our local creek. But the wood thrush, ahh the wood thrush, flew to a stump and looked at me, the feathers on its crown at full attention. What is it about thrushes that makes me so undone? They are so soft, so secretive, and their songs are truly other-wordly. Rather should I say, I do enjoy this world much more when there is a thrush singing. At dusk yesterday I went back to the creek and was treated to my first taste of wood thrush music this year. Amazing how one tiny bird can transform a scraggly road side forest fragment, for just a minute, into a sacred place.