The Bird Songs of Summer

Adirondack birders debate which species provides the ultimate soundtrack to summer

By Carol MacKinnon

What is the bird song that tells you summer is here? Is it the whistle of the white-throated sparrow or the haunting cry of the common loon? This week we asked Adirondack Explorer followers on social media to answer: “What bird call is the quintessential “Song of Summer”?” Readers and birding experts rapidly whittled the list down to three summer titans: common loon, hermit thrush and red-eyed vireo. 

Two experts go with the red-eyed vireo

Wildlife biologist and Adirondack Explorer Board member Larry Master, who last year catalogued the birds he heard on a summer morning on the Adirondack Rail Trail, says that while the loon and the hermit thrush “are definitely two of my favorite Adirondack songsters, for me the bird that sings all summer and throughout the day, unlike other birds that quiet down after the breeding season and after the early morning hours, are red-eyed vireos.  Although monotonous if not boring, their singing continues almost all summer. They get my vote for persistence.”

Naturalist Ed Kanze, who writes the Adirondack Explorer’s On the Wild Side column (available with subscription), concurs: “there is no question in my mind that hands down, the absolute classic bird voice of the Adirondack summer is that of the red-eyed vireo. They sing incessantly, and their season of singing seems to me to be much longer than that of hermit thrushes, and much longer than the season during which loons utter the most soulful wails.”

Related Reading: Learn more about accessible birding opportunities and inclusive wildlife viewing locations across the Adirondacks in this recent Explorer article: Expanding birding opportunities in the Adirondacks

Other favorites

The loon won our online poll, which didn’t surprise Denise Silfee, Director of Education and Communications at the Adirondack Center for Loon Conservation: “While we think all of the bird sounds of the Adirondack summer are special and important, we admittedly are biased in thinking that the call of the loon screams ‘North Country summer’ more than any other!” 

The Explorer’s Birdwatch columnist, Joan Collins, casts her vote for the hermit thrush.  She recalls: “I was captivated by an ethereal bird song outside our home when we moved to the Adirondacks in 1997. After dinner each night, my two sons, then five and two years old, and I would hike up the mountain we live on. Sitting on the summit and watching the sunset as that bird sang, I wondered aloud what its name was. My 5-year-old son replied, ‘It’s the hermit thrush, who sings the sun to set in the western sky.’ (Which he learned in Kindermusik class!)  It is considered by many to be the most beautiful bird song in North America. I might add, for those of us up early, that it also sings the sun to rise in the eastern sky! The hermit thrush’s enchanting voice returns in April and they continue to sing into mid-August, fortunately for us, much longer than most species.”

Another fan of the hermit thrush is Mikayla Ploof, board member at Northern New York Audubon: “The hermit thrush has a song that is soft and delicate. Its spiraling melody drifts through the forest on warm mornings and cool quiet evenings. When a hermit thrush sings it fills the air with calm, beauty, and a touch of magic. You can find the hermit thrush in summer’s most peaceful places: along cool green trails, in shady northern forests, and in the mountains where everything feels still, yet so full of life. The hermit thrush adds the perfect soundtrack to these already special moments when you feel most at peace in nature. If summer could sing, it would sound like the hermit thrush. Really, the hermit thrush feels like summer because it shows up right when summer is at its peak, and its song captures that quiet, fleeting beauty we all love about the summer months.” 

Listen to the songs

In truth, it’s hard to listen to any of these bird calls and not be transported to summer woods and waters. In a recent Explorer article, Vanessa Rojas, a professor at SUNY ESF, pointed out that “hiking has this end game of getting to the top of the mountain and back,” she said. “And birding is very different, where you stop and you listen.” So take a minute to listen to the haunting common loon, the reedy, melancholic hermit thrush, the “teacher” ovenbird, the eastern whip-poor-will, the white-throated sparrow, the black-throated blue warbler, and the Blackburnian warbler. 

Or, to truly replicate summer, you could play the song of the red-eyed vireo all day long.

Photos at the top: Lisa Ballard (loon), Adirondack Explorer archive (hermit thrush, red-eyed vireo)