trespass. “Stay out” he said. A sharp, unmusical pit,

trespass. “Stay out” he said. A sharp, unmusical pit, pit, pit told me of an intruder in the thrush territory — a predatoi or another male thrush.

I often heard that alarm as I set up a blind to photograph nest life of the wood thrush. Wondrous activities were seen and occasionally photographed when the scolding stopped and the bird again dropped his lovely notes into the summer woods

Go to a wood with a stream and big trees and listen for the thrush at the end of the summer day. Go quickly. Go soon. The wood thrush population in Virginia has diminished by 71 percent since 1985. We are loosing this singer at a rapid rate due to loss of winter habitat in the tropics, increased mortality during long, over-water migratory flights and destruction of nesting habitat.

A few acres of swampy woods won’t suffice for the wood thrush. Through forest fragmentation in North America, predators — grackles, jays, crows, raccoons and the para sitic cowbird — have plunged wood thrush populations to dangerous levels. Natural predators have become a menace in diminished wood lots They once benefited the speckled thrush by removing the runt, the unwary, the weak and the slow and leaving the strongest and fittest to reproduce. Populations of predators have grown as wood thrush numbers have dropped.

The spot-breasted thrush can no longer escape constant predation by moving into the interior where these edge-loving predators are not so active. Woodlands large enough to give the wood thrush — and hooded and Kentucky warblers, redeyed vireos, scarlet tanagers and ovenbirds — a measure of protection no longer exist. The wood thrush and other migrants from the tropics are not successfully reproducing themselves in sufficient numbers to maintain healthy populations. Hope is diminishing that future generations Of listeners to bird music will hear the song of the wood thrush and experience the calm of spirit that descends to the listener.