Secretive solitaire

The term “solitaire” should call up one of at least three images. First might be that of some lonely person playing a card game by himself. Second could be of some overjoyed person showing off an impressive ring containing a beautiful stone. The third is the one that comes to my mind. It’s a bird.

Townsend’s solitaire is how I’m used to seeing the word used. I don’t know if solitaire was a game yet in 1835. And I’m sure that John Kirk Townsend had no thoughts of pretty rings on his expedition to Oregon in 1835. But on that trip, near the mouth of the Columbia River, this odd thrush was first collected and recognized as something unique.

Townsend is known in bird lore as a bit of an oddity himself. He didn’t actually do the scientific work to name the species that bears his name. He did the fieldwork – collected and prepared the specimens – but his arch rival, John James Audubon, did the description and named the bird for Townsend.

Audubon also published “Birds of America” which caused Townsend to abandon a similar project and become a dentist. He failed at that, too, and died young, probably due to arsenic poisoning – arsenic being what he used to prepare the specimens that he collected on his expedition.

Townsend also first collected my favorite warbler, which also was named for him by someone else. Yes, it’s Townsend’s warbler.

Wow, those were the days. Just 70 years before my grandfather emigrated to Oregon and there were still new bird species to be found. Being an Easterner, though, Townsend might have initially mistaken his solitaire for a mockingbird. Superficially they are somewhat similar. Had he passed it off as just another common Eastern species, I wonder what it would be called today.

Or he might have missed seeing it altogether. He must have reached the mouth of the Columbia River in late fall or winter because at other times of the year, Townsend’s solitaire is found only at higher elevations, in forested areas. In July he should not have seen one there.

Solitaires, as I mentioned before, are unique. They are thrushes, rather closely related to American robins, veery and varied, hermit and Swainson’s thrushes; more distantly related to bluebirds; and more distant still from mockingbirds, which are in a different family entirely.

Thrushes are in the family Turdidae, which was the Roman name for thrush, and is not descriptive of their droppings. However, I will never forget the scientific name for the robin, Turdus migratorius, because of association. We called it the migrating … well, you get the idea.

There is only one solitaire species, which seems appropriate, in North America, but there are seven in Latin America and – get this – five in Hawaii. Now that’s got to be a history worth hearing. In Hawaii they are not called solitaires, but are Hawaiian thrushes, and one is extinct.

Those solitaires, or thrushes, obviously don’t get around much. Townsend’s solitaire, though, has a large range – from Alaska, through the western cordillera, or mountain ranges, and down into northern Mexico. None of the neotropical solitaires have that kind of a distribution, either.

Although common here, Townsend’s solitaire is not commonly seen here. As with most thrushes other than the robin, solitaires know how to be secretive. But while a Swainson’s thrush will skulk in the shadows, solitaires just perch very still in the open. At rest they blend in with their surroundings.

Solitaires truly are solitary. I don’t recall ever seeing more than one at a time. And it is a bird which I have seen in only one of two ways. Either it’s perched prominently at the top of some dead tree or stub, or, more commonly, it’s seen as something out of the corner of the eye that’s just not quite right.

Nothing is moving, but the shapes are not quite random. Then you see the distinctive white eye ring or you catch the peach-colored wing patch. But still the bird does not move. It takes you a moment longer to convince yourself that there really is a bird there, and then you wonder how you almost missed it.

That eye ring is almost spooky. Its white-edged wing feathers are cloudlike, set in a stormy gray sky of a body. And if posed just right, facing a bit away, its tapered, white-edged tail is swordlike. Taken together, its body is almost ghostlike.

Or, it can be the most conspicuous bird on the block. During nesting season, male solitaires are great songsters, as are all the thrushes. But he’s a conspicuous songster. For every varied thrush or Swainson’s thrush you might accidentally see in a season, there are probably 15 or 20 that you’ll hear. It’ll drive you crazy trying to find the singer.

Singing solitaires, however, are begging to be seen and heard. At first you won’t be able to place the song. It’s a rapid warble reminiscent of a winter wren but it’s too unorganized. Then it’s finchlike in its sharpness. But deep down, it’s a thrush’s reedy warble.

Again having to be unique, this song may be heard year-round. Not many birds sing year-round. Why? Well, why do they sing at all? Contrary to the romantics among you, it’s not because they are happy. For most, it’s to announce and defend a territory.

Bird territories are almost always for breeding and nesting purposes. So singing is almost always in the spring and early summer. But solitaires sing in the fall and into the winter, because fall is when they set up their winter territories. Again unlike other thrushes, solitaires are not great migrators. They will move down from high mountains into lowlands, but seldom do they travel very far south. In fact, they may be more likely to travel east.

They know that they’ve arrived when they find a good supply of over-wintering berries. In the summer, solitaires are unique in their unthrushlike fly-catching behavior. In the winter, solitaires forget the fliers and forage for fruit – mostly juniper berries in most of their range.

Around here it must be a very confused or very frustrated bird. It comes to Coeur d’Alene in the winter looking for fruit. All summer long it’s high above us on the steep and rocky slopes of the taller Kootenai County peaks. That’s where I’ve been startled by their ghostliness and thrilled by their vociferousness.

There are a few ornamental junipers around town but not enough to sustain the solitaires I see here every winter. And that’s why they are so territorial in the winter – which is why they sing in the winter. Do Coeur d’Alene winters make you want to sing for joy? I didn’t think so.

A solitaire must stake out enough fruit to see it through the winter, rather the same way a red squirrel stakes out a territory of cones and mushrooms for the winter. If their territory isn’t large enough they’ll starve.

So, what do solitaires eat here in the winter? That’s a good question. In some areas they substitute mistletoe berries for junipers – but we don’t have those either. We do, however, have scads of mountain ash berries. They are the beautiful orange-red berries in the otherwise ugly trees that have been planted all over town.

Robins and waxwings love mountain ash berries. But neither group of birds is solitary, so they go around in large moblike flocks stripping trees bare in a matter of hours. I’m sure that a solitaire could not defend against such an onslaught. There must be other berries they stake out here.

Actually, it shouldn’t be difficult to determine. I’ve just never made the effort. But every winter, the most likely place that I’ve found for seeing a Townsend’s solitaire is along Coeur d’Alene Lake Drive – anywhere from Sherman Avenue to Higgens Point. Along Centennial Trail, at least in spots, there must be some fruiting bush that draws them in. Now I wonder what it is.

The real time to seek solitaires, though, is in the summer. Similar to the awe inspired by the sight of a mountain bluebird high on some rough forest opening, the sight of a flying solitaire is pretty spectacular. That’s when you really see the colors and patterns of its wings, and the contrast of its tail. But it’s the surroundings you find yourself in that really sets this scene apart. Solitaires know how to pick a view.

But that’s for the future. You don’t have to wait for summer. And even though this bird bears no association with the card game or the diamond ring of the same name, it is well named. Solitaire is its name, and solitary is its game. So now is the time to find one close at hand. Find the berries of winter, and you might see a solitary solitaire.