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"And the songbirds keep singing like they know the score." - Christine McVie
Stepping outside the car door, I could hear the sound immediately.
With the evening beginning to drop more intently now over this northern Michigan jack pine barren, the haunting and mysterious song of the swamp angel rang out clearly, at once opening-up my heart and piercing my soul.
In many parts of the world, there are signature or keystone wildlife or plant species that are not only known to live in a particular area but seem also to envelope the whole experience of being in that setting.
The California sequoias are one example, the saguaro cacti of the southwestern deserts are another.
In the Upper Peninsula, the stunning songs of the hermit thrush and its associated evening vocalist, the white-throated sparrow, are two such bird species that can instantaneously spark vivid memories of especially summer evenings here.
The hermit thrush, a somewhat drab gray-brown bird, has a white chest decorated with spots and most prominently a rust-colored tail. It also sports a whitish eye ring understated compared with others so adorned in the bird world.
Belying this relatively low-key appearance, the song of the hermit thrush has inspired numerous nicknames for the species beyond "swamp angel."
The National Park Service's Northeast Temperate Network Inventory and Monitoring Program described it this way in a website post, while providing some of the mechanics going on behind the curtain.
"Considered by many to have the prettiest song of all singing birds, the sound of a hermit thrush has been described as flute-like and ethereal and has led to it being nicknamed the 'American nightingale.' Its song has inspired many a poet and natural history writer.
…Their song is often the first to greet you in the early dawn, and the last to serenade your evenings. It begins with a single high note, followed by a downward cascading, double-noted, slow trill. That single note in the beginning of the song, which stands alone much like a hermit, is what helps distinguish its song from that of its cousins the wood thrush, Swainson's thrush and veery.
Thrushes are able to accomplish their vocal acrobatics through the employment of a double voice box, unique to this bird family, called the syrinx. It allows them simultaneously voice-independent notes which blend together, letting this incredible bird harmonize with itself."
I have often suspected when hearing their miraculous singing resounding from a hardwood forest or along a river as I fish the setting sun down, that hermit thrushes sing so often in succession because they like to hear themselves.
There is a sense I get of, "Oh, you liked that? Well, then listen to this."
I spent several minutes listening to likely a half-dozen or more hermit thrushes in concert on the jack pine plains. The mosquitoes, in their buzzing and biting clouds, couldn't begin to match the sounds of these evening virtuosos.
Ripe, sweet blueberries covered the very low bushes across the floor of this young growth of jack pines. The sky was being painted in brush stokes of purple, magenta and blue-brown streaks, especially near the horizon line where the hills were covered in thick, green pines.
It is very difficult for me to imagine hearing hermit thrush songs and not stopping whatever I am doing, at least momentarily, to marvel at the sounds.
I think most people who live in this region have heard the song even if they didn't know which bird it was singing it -- kind of like songs on the radio.
However, I am saddened to know that there are countless people who have never heard this song nor ever will. Even the likes of famous bird painter John James Audubon were never introduced to this singular event.
In the compilations of Arthur Cleveland Bent, Alfred Otto Gross explained:
"Unfortunately, those who know the hermit only as a migrant are unfamiliar with this bird as the accomplished singer, for it passes on its migration without uttering more than a few uninteresting calls.
Some of the earlier ornithologists were evidently unaware of its accomplishments. Wilson did not know of its song and Audubon as far as his personal acquaintance with the bird is concerned speaks only of its single plaintive note.
One must meet the hermit in its nesting haunts of the northern woods to know this bird at its best."
Despite other interpretations, the hermit thrush is named so because of its solitary lifestyle led during the wintertime. The bird occupies a range of wooded habitats. In Michigan, it is found across the entire U.P. and throughout the northern third of the Lower Peninsula.
A close second for me among birds whose songs embody what it is to experience the north country is the white-throated sparrow.
This much more prominently marked bird - with singing males exhibiting a crisp, white throat patch, bright yellow marking behind the bill and in front of the eyes and black-and-white stripes on its head -- can match the hermit thrush's song in its clarity and plaintive quality.
Like the thrush, the brilliant, clear notes of this sparrow's song carry a long distance through even a misty morning or across a valley as the sun descends.
However, what its song might lack in complication and dexterous musical performance compared to the hermit thrush, the white-throated sparrow makes up for this by choosing its notes carefully, with two varied, primarily six-note songs.
The most-often heard version starts on a low note, followed by several vocalizations of the same note, which is a bit higher than the first note in the song. These notes are performed in triplets.
Long before Taylor Swift mastered the technique of crafting melodies composed of a series of notes on the same pitch, the white-throated sparrows had discovered the power of this type of delivery.
In fact, the first notes of the Canadian national anthem "Oh Canada" are said to have been inspired by the song of the white-throated sparrow.
The rhythm of the bird's song has been described as though it were singing the phrase "Old Sam Peabody, Peabody" or "My sweet Canada, Canada, Canada." The second song of the sparrow using the same phrasing but is more descending.
Over the past few decades, a strange thing has happened to the bird's primary song that started in the west and has spread east. There's a 2020 "Lonely Planet" article out there on the internet discussing this phenomenon said to be unprecedented.
"Doublet-ending songs emerged and replaced triplet-ending songs west of the Rocky Mountains somewhere between 1960 and 2000 and appeared just east of the Rockies in the 2000s," the article states. "In this version, the birds were found to drop the third note from some of the phrases, making the tune doublet-ending, and sounding like, 'Oh, my sweet Cana, Cana, Canada."
From recordings of nearly 2,000 singing males, researchers found that the song variation begun in western North America had spread east and dominated the previous triplet ending song, according to the article.
By 2019, only birds in the far eastern part of Canada were singing the old version of the song. The birdsong in the U.P. had also changed, according to the study.
"Genetic testing and geolocator tracking revealed that birds from different regions overwintering in the same areas may learn from each other through song tutoring, facilitating the cultural spread of dialects to new areas," the article said.
"Songs are used to defend territories and attract females, and the researchers have speculated that the spread may be attributed to female sparrows being attracted to the novelty of the doublet-ending song."
I wonder if eventually, the old triplet-ending song will reemerge as a variant song females will once again fall in love with.
A few nights after I was privileged to hear the concert of the hermit thrushes over the jack pines, I returned to the location with my wife. She has come to love the hermit thrush song as her favorite among bird songs.
We picked some blueberries for our morning oatmeal as the mosquitoes again followed us in clouds like dirt followed "Pigpen" in the Charlie Brown cartoons.
I climbed to the top of a small sand mound to get a better ear on the scene. The hermit thrushes were again in fine form, though there didn't appear to be as many singing on this particular evening.
Amid these beautiful birdsongs, coming from somewhere way back in the mix, was the song of a lone white-throated sparrow. To hear both species singing together was a beautiful thing.
As we headed home, we rode with the car windows down. At one spot we heard a hermit thrush singing very close to the dirt road. I stopped the vehicle and shut off the engine.
I used my cellphone to record a minute or so of the wonderful music. I then sent the file to my wife so she could have it on her phone to listen to anytime she wanted to.
In the days and weeks ahead until fall, I will be soaking in all the sounds of the thrushes I can before they head off to the southern United States for the winter.
There they will maintain their solitary, off-season lifestyle before returning to the north woods again next spring for more spectacular performances.
Editor's note: Outdoors North is a weekly column produced by the Michigan Department of Natural Resources on a wide range of topics important to those who enjoy and appreciate Michigan's world-class natural resources of the Upper Peninsula.