The image you just clicked is a photo of a hermit thrush!
Hermit thrushes are known as very reclusive birds, who are "often heard but rarely seen," and the song people hear is often referred to as "meloncholy." "They have a flute-like song that is mournful and sad, albiet a little loud." It's a bird that "lurks."
Compared to other thrushes, the hermit thrush's colors are "muted" and "plain," and they have little "distinguishing markers."
The hermit song is "more like human music and less like birdsong." It's a little freak.
The female hermit thrush builds her nest alone.
The hermit thrush migrates north earlier in the spring and lingers later in the fall than others. The little freak.
There's a Oneida legend featuring the hermit thrush. Long ago, birds didn't have songs. Only humans had songs, and in the birds' hearts, "they wished they too could be endowed with this gift." So a race was made for all the birds. The winner would get the best song. The hermit thrush sort of bummed a ride on the wings of the eagle. The eagle won with the hermit thrush, giving them both really killer birdsongs. But when what the hermit thrush had done was discovered, it retreated into the woods, where it now lives alone in shame.
The hermit thrush is also mentioned in T.S. Eliot's the Wasteland:
If there were rock
And also water
And water
A spring
A pool among the rock
If there were the sound of water only
Not the cicada
And dry grass singing
But sound of water over a rock
Where the hermit-thrush sings in the pine trees
Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop
But there is no water
Hermit crabs are referred to as "hermits" becuase they inhabit the shells of creatures who no longer live in them.
The article titled "Were 'penis worms' the first hermits?" (ha!) notes that the "oldest known fossils suggesting hermiting behavior" dates back to 500 million years ago (woah!) with the descovery of evidence of the ancient priapulid worm, otherwise known as the penis worm!
The hermit penis worm was alive during the Cambrian explosion! That time at the dawn of life! Paleontologist, Jakob Vinther, says that "Perhaps it's not a surprise that some priapulids became hermits when you think about what this predatory arms race was all about: eating, ducking, and hiding."
There are twenty(!) kinds of penis worms in today's modern world. But none of them exhibit hermiting behavior :/
