A Hermit Thrush
A small, solitary light-brown bird that flew across the road in front of me and paused in the mulch around some bushes turned out to be a Hermit Thrush. I only saw it for a brief moment as it stood with round head erect, looking carefully around – a slender, Robin-like bird with a thin bill, held slightly turned up, a brown back, pale breast and dark brown spots on throat and chest, a watchful round eye, and a restless cinnamon tail. Then it skittishly ducked into the bushes and disappeared.
I was reminded again of the hard-to-describe airy, almost insubstantial quality of a Hermit Thrush. I don’t think it’s a particularly frail bird at all, really – or no more frail than most small birds. But it very often looks elusive and vague, not quite fully there, in this place, at this moment. As if it’s halfway vanishing, even as I see it.