Catharus ustulatus
Order Passeriformes
Family Turdidae
Other names: Olive-backed Thrush
♂ Adult male.– Upper parts olive-brown; eye-ring buffy; cheek, when seen in strong light, washed with buff; breast whitish, spotted with black.
Nest, in bushes or small trees, bulky and compact.
Eggs, light greenish-blue, spotted with brown.
The Olive-backed or Swainson’s Thrush breeds on Greylock Mountain in Massachusetts, on the higher Catskills, in deep spruce swamps on the southern New Hampshire and Vermont upland, and commonly all through northern New England and in the Adirondacks. In the rest of New England and New York it is a spring and fall migrant, a bird seen only by those who look for it. During the second half of May it may be found in roadside thickets, open woods, and even in the yards of villages and towns, if there is attractive shrubbery and if the locality is favorable to migration.
The bird occasionally sings on migration, early in the morning and toward evening; but on its northern breeding-ground the song becomes a characteristic sound. It is unmistakably the voice of a thrush, like a Veery’s song inverted, going up instead of down the scale, but throatier, more gurgling, inferior in purity, richness, and suggestiveness to those of the three other common thrushes. Its call note is a sharp whit, which can be varied in tone and power; it also utters on its breeding-ground a note like the syllables chee-urr. In the fall, from the end of September to early October, the migrant birds frequent the dry birch-lined lanes or country roads, or the open glades of woodland; with them are often associated, both in spring and fall, the Gray-cheeked Thrushes described below. Both species are so shy that it is often impossible to get near enough to distinguish one from the other. If an Olive-back perches for a moment in good light, the observer can make out that the feathers under the eye, the cheek, so to speak, are of a yellower shade than the rest of the head; a faint buffy eyering, too, is a distinctive mark. The spotting is not heavy, nor does it extend down the flanks, as in the Wood Thrush; the entire upper parts are olive-brown, nowhere tawny. Sometimes the bird when startled utters its call-note, whit, or answers an imitation of it; this note is characteristic, and settles its identity.
Hoffmann – A Guide to the Birds of New England and Eastern New York (1904)