Unlimited edition. 18 x 24 inch, museum-quality poster on matte paper.

The hermit thrush is aptly named; it’s a quiet, secretive bird, and although I most often see them in my yard, the encounters are only occasional and fleeting. Moving over the ground or through low shrub branches, it forages in the same zones as towhees and sparrows, but makes its presence known much less often than these more conspicuous species. Over the last two years of listing, I’ve seen hermit thrushes just 10 times in my yard.

I’m more likely to hear the hermit thrush’s song – if my suburban neighborhood is uncharacteristically quiet and I’m listening closely, at least. Its song calls to mind a fairy playing a few brief, lilting notes on a small flute; it comes like melancholy magic from the shadows. Massachusetts nature writer Robert Finch observes “You have to be listening for it, that soft, reedy series of rising, diminishing spirals of sound. It seems like an echo of a song rather than a song itself, disappearing even as one apprehends it.” Yet, should you hear a hermit thrush singing farther from settlement – and they generally prefer remove from humans – the magic flute will draw your ear. The long-gone poet John Burroughs penned a paean to the hermit thrush; in it, the bird’s song takes center stage.

Purest sounds are farthest heard,

Voice of man or song of bird,

And the hermit's silver horn

In dreaming night or dewy morn

Is a serene, ethereal psalm,

Devoutly gay, divinely calm --

The soul of song, the breath of prayer,

In melody beyond compare,

'Tis borne afar on every breeze,

Nor captive held by housing trees.

Where louder voices faint and fail

The hermit's purer tones prevail.

Note: These archival poster prints feature rich, appealing colors. I encourage customers to take care in handling them until they are framed/protected for display; the darker colors on the matte paper can be scratched. They ship rolled, so customers need to flatten them before framing (or have their framer do so).

Charitable Sales Model: Whenever one of these poster prints is purchased, a charitable contribution equal to 10% of the print’s cost (or $3.60) is made to a nonprofit working to tackle environmental or social challenges. Read more about my charitable sales model here.