Mystery Bird—Part 2

A few weeks later a near-tragic incident finally led me to an answer. One afternoon we heard a bird blast hard up against a window (despite the branches in front of it!). I went out and found it lying in shock. I gently brought it inside, placed it in a box, and said a little prayer that it might recover. As we waited, I began to think about what kind of a bird it might be. I’d been focused on getting it quickly to the safety of the box and not inspecting it (it clearly was not one of our familiar birds).

My quick impression was that it might be a sparrow. It had the right coloring and size. While awaiting the hoped-for recovery, I got out my field guide. No, this was not a sparrow—its bill was much longer and narrower. Hmmm, I remembered that my Mystery Bird had a bill like this one. Could this be it?! I began to pour through the book, now focused on beak shapes. The only small species of bird with that type of bill is a warbler. We’ve never seen or heard of a warbler around these parts, so I’d been assuming that we had none. Besides, the book’s warblers seemed all the wrong color for the Mystery Bird.

But I continued looking through the lengthy warbler section. Way towards the end of the chapter, sort of hidden away, and not really looking like a warbler at all, was the Louisiana water thrush. It looked very much like the stunned bird. Well, a bird in the box is worth two in the bush, and now I had the opportunity to examine this guy closer. In a few minutes I could hear him recovering, telling me he wanted out of his box. I took him outside to let him go—not yet into the wild blue yonder, but into a clear plastic bag. With the field guide laid beside him, I was able to identify him as a Louisiana water thrush. I was excited. It seemed that maybe I had finally found my Mystery Bird. One more test: What was his song like?

Blessed be the Internet! I navigated my way to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Website, did a search on the Louisiana water thrush, and clicked on a recording of its song. Bingo! That was it! This little guy was not an indigo bunting or a sparrow, but a member of the wood warbler family. Just to be sure, I clicked on the indigo bunting song. It was strikingly similar, but now that I could listen to them side by side, it was clear that the water thrush was my bird. Mystery solved!

This experience has given me the opportunity to ponder why I got so far off track the last couple of years. Had I somehow been led to page 350 of The Sibley Field Guide to Birds of Eastern North America three years ago, I wouldn’t have wasted so much time wandering down the indigo bunting blind alley.

It’s a good example of how we may be presented with a mystery, cast about for a solution, and then seize upon a handy but erroneous answer. It’s not hard to convince yourself that you have solved the puzzle and later even attempt to explain away contrary observations. All fields of human knowledge are replete with examples of faulty explanations of phenomena that people hang onto, long after they should be cast aside for something closer to the truth. I’ve written before of how the Catholic Church continued to insist that the Earth was situated at the center of the universe, after evidence to the contrary was available.

I had become convinced that my Mystery Bird was an indigo bunting. Although I tried to stick with that story, I at least kept my mind open to another answer. It took the water thrush’s bashing into the window to shake me out of my belief. I appreciate his hard-earned lesson for me. Now my challenge is to figure out why a Louisiana water thrush—which supposedly prefers habitat with flowing water—would take up residence in our dry neck of the woods. It’s one mystery after another.