The Wood Thrush owns the summer evening in Michigan's mature forests. Its song — a fluting, ethereal "ee-oh-lay" with a final flourish of overlapping notes — is produced by a two-sided voice box that lets the bird harmonize with itself, and it ranks among the most beautiful sounds in the North American woods. The bird itself is handsome and understated: warm cinnamon-brown above, brightest on the head, with clean white underparts marked by bold, round black spots.
It is a bird of the forest interior, foraging quietly on the shaded ground for insects and probing the leaf litter. Wood Thrushes breed in moist deciduous and mixed woods across Michigan from mid-May into late summer, then migrate to the forests of Central America. Sadly, the species has declined sharply and is now considered Near Threatened, pressured by forest fragmentation on both its breeding and wintering grounds and by heavy cowbird parasitism at woodland edges.
Feeds mostly on the forest floor, flipping leaf litter for beetles, ants, caterpillars, spiders, and other invertebrates, and takes snails whose shells provide calcium for eggshells. In late summer and fall it turns increasingly to fruit and berries to fuel migration.
That haunting, fluting "ee-oh-lay" is the Wood Thrush. Its branched voice box lets it sing two notes at once, producing an ethereal harmony considered one of the finest bird songs in North America.
The Wood Thrush is the most heavily and boldly spotted, with large round black spots on a white breast, and it is warmest rusty-brown on the head. Hermit and Swainson's Thrushes are smaller and more finely marked.
Wood Thrush numbers have dropped substantially due to fragmentation of forest on both breeding and wintering grounds, which exposes nests to more predators and to Brown-headed Cowbird parasitism. It is now listed as Near Threatened.
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