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Hermit Thrushby flighty on April 25, 2009
Hermit Thrushby flighty on April 7, 2009
Hermit Thrushby madmikey on February 11, 2009
Hermit Thrushby newbirder on July 6, 2008
Hermit Thrushby flighty on January 15, 2008
Hermit Thrush
The Hermit Thrush (Catharus guttatus) is a medium-sized North American thrush.
This species is 15-17 cm in length, and has the white-dark-white underwing patterm characteristic of Catharus thrushes. Adults are mainly brown on the upperparts, with reddish tails. The underparts are white with dark spots on the breast and grey or brownish flanks. They have pink legs and a white eye ring. Birds in the east are more olive-brown on the upperparts; western birds are more grey-brown.
Their breeding habitat is coniferous or mixed woods across Canada, Alaska and the northeastern and western United States. They make a cup nest on the ground or relatively low in a tree.
Hermit Thrushes migrate to wintering grounds in the southern United States and south to Central America. They are very rare vagrants to western Europe.
They forage on the forest floor, also in trees or shrubs, mainly eating insects and berries.
The Hermit Thrush's song[http://www.geocities.com/birdwatchernj/birdsongs/thrush_hermit_837.wav] is ethereal and flute-like, constructed from a descending musical phrase repeated at different pitches. They often sing from a high open location.
Hermit Thrush in popular culture
The Hermit Thrush is the state bird of Vermont.
Walt Whitman construes the Hermit Thrush as a symbol of the American voice, poetic and otherwise, in his elegy for Abraham Lincoln, "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd,"[http://www.bartleby.com/142/192.html] one of the fundamental texts in the American literary canon.
"A Hermit Thrush"[http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15322] is the name of a poem by the American poet Amy Clampitt.