A Trip to Vermont in Search of the Bicknell's Thrush

There is an exotic flavor to Vermont. Perhaps it is the moonlight over the mountainside chalets with the snow falling and the fires rising. Perhaps it is the ice cream, made from the milk of hard-working cows grazing in the valleys encircled by those green mountains. Perhaps it is the very name of the state, which is French for green mountain.

It was more wet than exotic when we were there twice in the last month. The first time the clouds lowered as we rose through the hills, and then let down a deluge while we ate our dinner. It was over as dusk approached, but the attendant still looked at us with disbelief as we paid the stiff toll to go up the road to the summit of Mt. Equinox.

"You won't see anything," he said, and he was right, even though he meant the scenery and we were going for a look at the rarest nesting bird in New England, the Bicknell's thrush. The fog grew thicker as we climbed up the hairpins and steep ascents, but we could still see the alpine scrub of spruce and fir as we approached the summit.

We almost missed seeing the huge building that suddenly loomed out of the soup and nearly hit us head on in the parking lot at the top. We wandered over the summit with the wind whipping the trees and most birds safely tucked into the thick brush for the night.

We were hoping to hear the evening song of this exotic thrush and see him perched at the top of one of those evergreens as he sang his farewell to daylight. Scientists are studying the few thousand remaining pairs that nest only on the higher mountains of the northeast. The most we saw or heard were a few yellow-rumped warblers and dark-eyed juncos trilling above the sound of the trees in the wind.

A few weeks later, we returned to another nearby mountain, Stratton. There, the gondola lifts you quietly over the snowless trails where only the ghosts of skiers were making their mad dash down the slopes. It was noon, and the thrush would have none of us except for its brief whining call uttered from deep within the thick growth at the trail's edge.

We were happy about that rather than downcast, because this was only a scouting trip for a bird club excursion scheduled for next summer and the weather was much better than the forecast had been. Tremendous downpours the night before had flooded rivers and washed out roads, but the sky was now clearing over the lovely hills.

At the top of the mountain a bird was trilling loudly and we assumed it was a junco, but sitting in a small tree and singing mightily was the smallest sparrow in New England. Not exotic at all, but plain and common, the chipping sparrow is also fond of nesting in the evergreen plantings around houses throughout the continent.

Just the day before as the rain had begun, we found many chipping sparrows at an overgrown Christmas tree farm in Russell. They chased each other through the wet grass and across the gravel road, stopping to sing briefly at the tops of low trees.

Young birds had just left their nests and were showing off their streaked breasts. Quite a few of the many sparrow species lose this streaking as adults, but still revert to the typical family marking as juveniles. I admire the little 'chippy' in my own yard as he comes to the summer seed I spread on the ground, whether young and streaked, or adult and streakless.

Look for the black pencil-line through the eye of the adult with a bright eyestripe above and a chestnut brown cap. Listen for the song which gives the bird its name, a rapid series of chips on a single pitch. If you hear it in the yard, think of the many wilderness places or mountaintops where the bird also sings.

You may never see or hear a Bicknell's thrush, but the bold and friendly sparrow that nests alongside the thrush will bring that exotic flavor to your very doorstep.