As you travel thru spire pointed fir forests of the western mountains you know the Thrush as a voice — a bell-like sublimated voice — a tolling Angelus — arresting toil and earthly thot. The first strain arouses emotions which the regularly falling cadences carry to a perfect close. The fine spirituality and serene uplifting quality of the song merge with nature's most exalted moods and it is generally heard in the solemn stillness of sunrise when dark fir forests are tipped with gold, or in the hush of sunset when the western sky is aglow. Out of the forest chantry rises in slow, soul-stirring cadences, high-up, high-up, look-up, look-up! —Bailey.
Rocky mountain region. Breeds in Canadian and upper Transition zones from British Columbia and Montana south to Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico. Winters from western and central Texas, southward over Mexican tableland to Guatemala.
A tree, often 200 feet high with 12-foot trunk, scattered in small groves from southwestern Oregon to mouth of Klamath river, California. Commonest north of Rogue river and largest on western slopes of Coast Range foothills, forming a continuous belt twenty miles wide between Point Gregory and mouth of Coquille River.