Hermit Thrush in the Garden

Yes, it's another post about birds on my gardening blog. This is slightly related to gardening, however, because I saw this cool bird in the University's Horticulture Display and Trial Garden. A couple mornings a week I like to sit on the bench by the water feature, drink my tea and watch whatever birds happen to be around. They like the water feature, so it's a great place to spot things.

Yesterday morning seemed really quiet, with not many birds flying around in the crabapple trees like normal. But as I was about to leave early, a bird slightly smaller than a robin fly right by me into the brush next to the bench. It hopped out the other side and into another bush where I could get a picture of it. It seemed to look at me, wondering why there was a giant creature sitting by it's water source. It was also bobbing it's tail up and down the whole time.

I had a vague notion that it was a thrush of some sort, based off of it's similarities to a robin in size, reddish tail, and in the white eye-ring it had. I pulled up the Cornell site on my phone and decided that Hermit Thrush fit my bird just right. 

Note the reddish tail.

In the meantime, the real bird had decided I wasn't too much of a threat and had hopped over to the small pond to get a drink. After, he rooted around in the leaf litter under a shrub for a while, looking for food.

Success! A tasty morsel for breakfast.

I was sad I had to leave to make it to my class on time and couldn't stay to watch this neat bird, but the fact that a quiet morning had turned into a life bird for me.