If you've never heard a wood thrush, you're missing out on something incredible. Its ethereal songs are so highly refined and wonderfully layered that they sound almost electronic. They are sublime. Of the wood thrush, America's favorite naturalist philosopher Henry Thoreau wrote, "This is the only bird whose note affects me like music. It lifts and exhilarates me. It is inspiring. It changes all hours to an eternal morning." Living in the woods, I'm fortunate to hear them often (though I almost never see one). Every time one sings nearby it stops me in my tracks.

There was I think a nightingale hanging around in a copse near me for a couple of weeks last autumn. It was so amazingly clear and liquid at 3am I didn't even mind being woken up.

Prairie Warbler, White Eyed Vireo and Wood Thrush songs stick in my head

We have a lot of California towhees in the ridge behind my house and they make a cute singular loud "Theet!" chirp that is distinctive and cheerful. For the first year of living here before I figured out what they were actually called, I just nicknamed them "The Theet Birds." They're fun to watch, they hop back and forth to dig up dirt for bugs with their feet and run all over the place making little trails through the bush.

We have housefinches and white crowned sparrows in my neighborhood, and both have really distinctive calls that get stuck in my head all the time. The housefinches sound like they're ripping a Van Halen riff, and the sparrows sound like they're singing the chorus to that TI/Young Dro song "Shoulder Lean".

All I know is something like a bird within her sang

All I know she sang a little while and then flew on

Tell me all that you know

I'll show you

Snow and rain

https://youtu.be/Xe2u7ogAgtQ

Not stuck in my head the same as a song, but after a day birding I'll have things like Pacific-Slope Flycatcher or Red Crossbill calls stuck in my head.

That doesn't mean they can't sing. It means their songwriter's not that good.

The screaming pihah when I lioved in the Perivian rainforest for a while.