Taken from MASSBIRD May, 21 re: Hermit Thrush...

#1 -- It's a drumlin, not a mount, named after an oxen accident, so peoples’ Massachusetts’s geography lessons probably did not include it, unless they live in ...

#2 -- Lincoln. It's conservation land basically bounded by Rte. 117, the Sudbury River with a stretch of view of Fairhaven Bay (it goes up to the strip of private homes on FB itself), a piece of Codman farms, a lovely Cooperative Organic farm, and a few more private places hidden deep in the woods. Most people think of the farmland as part of Mount Misery.

#3 -- Compared to Drumlin Farm, it's across the street (117), and about a mile west, just on the other side of the intersection (with light) at 126. The lower pond is right next to the road, and the parking lot is just west of that. (The parking lot, by the way, has had corrective pothole filling already this spring, so now you can go a mile an hour instead of 1/4 of a mile an hour. Carefully.)

#4 -- It is all of a five minute walk to get to the hermit thrush concert. After parking, take the short trail towards the pond, walk along the main path on the north side of the pond, turn left onto the Beech Path at the end of the pond. That's the hermit thrush sanctuary.

It's a great place to take friends, as the paths are clear and wide and also there are some hills around if you want a little exercise, but if you don't, you can stay low. I took a friend in a wheelchair once, and it was a little slow-going and bumpy, but she was thrilled to be able to get into the woods at all.

At the end of the Beech Trail comes the farmland, which adds to the walk quality, because of the great sunshine and open air and all the swallows and butterflies and also some of it is really organic, a real thrill, and the rest is low-tech. If you walk through the fields to the other side, then turn right on the path between two fields, you come to a little pond/stream area which has another crew of birds. The bobolinks hopefully have found a place to nest on the other side of the bridge in a part that's kept in meadow. Otherwise it's the usual haying story.

At the other side of that field is the St. Ann's parking lot on Rte 126, which is an alternative way to enter the whole area, but farther from the hermit thrushes.

I hope people get a chance to hear these hermit thrushes sing. It's so holy.

Martha Schwope, Concord, MA

-- Sean T Noonan (sean@stnphotography.com), May 30, 2001