The beautiful Hermit Thrush can be identified from other spotted thrushes by its complete narrow white eye ring, as well as its contrasting reddish tail. It chooses drier and brushier habitat than most of the other thrushes, foraging upon the ground and can generally be located in habitat similar to the Swainson's Thrush.
There are three distinct subspecies, which include the Taiga or Eastern, Interior West, and the Pacific. The hardy Eastern birds have thicker bills with pale buffy tips on greater coverts, stocky, and brightly colored. Interior West are pale and grayer with very limited red wash on the flight feathers. The Pacific are more spotted than the Eastern, thinner billed than all of them, with white undertail coverts.
The voice is like that of most spotted thrushes, an ethereal flued whistle without the clear rising and falling, which is due to the syrinx, the double vocal organ at the base of the bird trachea. The thrushes have some of the most advanced organs in the world, leading to a dual sound, much like the ability of the twelve string guitar.
Hermit Thrush
NW Corner Payne County CBC, 2017
The most hardy of the thrushes, this passerine migrates earlier in the spring and returns to its home base later in the fall in late September-October. It is likely the only thrush to be found in most of the US in the winter. Those that do migrate will be in flight overnight, except the Pacific Northwest, which usually remains there. This thrush is more related to the Mexican Russet Nightingale-Thrush than to its own US family members, and usually can be found singing from a high perch.
Often found during the Christmas Bird Count, this unusual bird of never ending wonder has been described in many written works.
East of the Rockies, this bird is usually a ground nester, and West of the Rockies, it nests in trees. This neotropical migrants finds its way as far south as Central America in the winter.
To See Interior West Hermit Thrush and Birds of Arizona:
https://debhirt.blogspot.com/2018/05/birding-on-shoestring-wilds-of-arizona.html
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