First wood thrush of the year

Every year, at the beginning of May, about the same time that the indigo buntings start to appear at our feeders, we await the sound of the returning wood thrush.
     Now, they’re back.
     They have the most beautiful song of any bird – an ethereal, flute-like sound that echoes hauntingly through the woods and makes us stop in appreciation and awe, if only for a few seconds.
     “Whenever a man hears it he is young, and Nature is in her spring; wherever he hears it, it is a new world and a free country, and the gates of Heaven are not shut against him,” Henry David Thoreau wrote of the wood thrush’s song.
     But the thrush is as elusive as his song is transfixing, and it’s rare to actually see one. Instead, we have the pleasure of listening to his song for the entire summer before he leaves again.
     Usually, he sings in the morning and at dusk, making lovely bookends to the day.

     If you’ve never heard one, this little video gives you an idea of how one sounds. Listening is almost like praying.