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Hermit Thrush
Conservation status
Least Concern (IUCN 3.1)
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Aves
Order:	Passeriformes
Family:	Turdidae
Genus:	Catharus
Species:	C. guttatus
Binomial name
Catharus guttatus (Pallas, 1811)
Synonyms
Hylocichla guttata

The Hermit Thrush (Catharus guttatus) is a medium-sized North American thrush. It is not very closely related to the other North American migrant species of Catharus, but rather to the Mexican Russet Nightingale-thrush.^[1]

Description

This species is 15–17 cm in length, and has the white-dark-white underwing pattern 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.

Behaviour

Hermit Thrush, captured in southeastern North Carolina during the winter season.

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. Although they usually only breed in forests, Hermit Thrushes will sometimes winter in parks and wooded suburban neighborhoods. They are very rare vagrants to western Europe.

They forage on the forest floor, also in trees or shrubs, mainly eating insects and berries.

Song

The Hermit Thrush's song^[2] 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

Ocala National Forest, Florida 2008

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,"^[3] one of the fundamental texts in the American literary canon. This bird first appears in another canonical poem, Whitman's "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking." "A Hermit Thrush"^[4] is the name of a poem by the American poet Amy Clampitt. A Hermit Thrush appears in the fifth section ("What the Thunder Said") of the T. S. Eliot poem The Waste Land.

Former Canadian indie-rock band Thrush Hermit took their name from a reversal of the two parts. It is also shared by the American bands Hermit Thrushes and Hermit Thrush.

The song of the Hermit Thrush is audible in the "Garden" stage of Super Mario Galaxy for the Nintendo Wii.

Notes

References

• BirdLife International (2004). Catharus guttatus. 2006. IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. IUCN 2006. www.iucnredlist.org. Retrieved on 12 May 2006. Database entry includes justification for why this species is of least concern
• Winker, Kevin & Pruett, Christin L. (2006): Seasonal migration, speciation, and morphological convergence in the avian genus Catharus (Turdidae). Auk 123(4): 1052-1068. [Article in English with Spanish abstract] DOI: 10.1642/0004-8038(2006)123[1052:SMSAMC]2.0.CO;2 PDF fulltext
• Farrand, John & Bull, John, The Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Birds, Eastern Region, National Audubon Society (1977)

External links

• Hermit Thrush - Catharus guttarus - USGS Patuxent Bird Identification InfoCenter
• Hermit Thrush Species Account - Cornell Lab of Ornithology
• Hermit Thrush Information - South Dakota Birds and Birding