Thrush Music, Hark!

It was about a quarter to six this evening, and I was walking through the twilight along a road that crosses the Silvermine River, north of Norwalk. I stopped to tie my sneaker on a bridge above the water. As I bent, the reflection of a large bird glided across the water. I looked up to see a great blue heron on the wing. I walked on, past towering white pines and an old house with dark brown shingles, and from the woods I heard a bird singing, a long introductory note followed by a flutey phrase. It was a sound I knew but had not heard in 20 years, the sound of the north woods, of the Adirondacks. In the twilight on this early spring day, the first mild day of the season, a hermit thrush was singing.