With nearly 14 1/2 hours of daylight, we enter May. No other month gives us happenings of this growing season like those of May. It is a month of abundant spring wildflowers under trees in the open ...

There is a quiet bird of winter that appears each year outside my door. It is solitary and discrete — no flocking sparrow or clamoring jay. This bird blends in, wrapped in russet, its cloudy breast ...

We were quietly tromping through the Pittsford woods on one of the town’s wonderful hiking trails when I heard it — the call of Vermont’s state bird, the hermit thrush. Nicknamed America’s nightingale ...

Movie soundtracks often include the song of the hermit thrush to establish a mood of isolation or an outdoorsy setting. Their song has an ethereal reedy quality and lazily rises or falls, each series ...

I’ve been reading old bird books again. There’s something nice about the old-fashioned approach, when human appreciation for birds was allowed to be front and center. Let me show you what I mean with ...

“It’s a human thing to think we invented music,” says Yianni Kourmadas. “But other animals practice it as well. The hermit thrush, for instance, has a sophisticated grasp on music, and uses ...