According to a 1991 Star Pics trading card, a Bewick’s Wren (pronounced like “Buick”) supposedly greeted viewers during each Twin Peaks episode in seasons 1 and 2. In reality, the bird was a varied female Thrush. The film location for this scene was originally identified by Charles from the now defunct InTwinPeaks.com website. It was one of my favorite location reveals, so I’m presenting details from his site below as a tribute.
WHAT BIRD IS SEEN IN THE OPENING CREDITS OF TWIN PEAKS?
For the longest time, I believed that the Star Pics card offered the correct identification of the opening credits bird. Thanks to fellow Bookhouse Boy Christian Hartleben and Bookhouse Gal Pamela Tarajcak, I know better.
The bird appears to be a female Varied Thrush. I found this photo of an adult female by Joe Castino on Audubon. org. The bird is described as follows:
The haunting songs of the Varied Thrush echo through the dense humid forests of the Pacific Northwest. Long minor-key whistles repeated after deliberate pauses, they seem like sounds without a source; only a careful searcher will find the bird itself. Although it looks superficially like a robin, the Varied Thrush is far more elusive, usually feeding on the ground among dense thickets. Typical of the far west, it sometimes surprises birders by straying all the way to the Atlantic Coast in winter.
I really wonder how they captured footage of the bird. Were the cameras rolling when the bird landed? Did they attract the bird to the branch with food? Is there audio of the bird whistling? Life is full of mysteries, Donna.
TWIN PEAKS STAR PICS CARD – BEWICK’S WREN
As mentioned, the bird was mistakenly identified as a Bewick’s Wren in the Star Pics “Twin Peaks” trading card set released in 1991.
On card number 3, the bird’s significance was explained: “The Bewick’s Wren is a bird indigenous to the Pacific Northwest that lives near water. The beauty of the raw, woodsy nature of Twin Peaks is represented through the images of the opening credits.”
WHERE IS THE TWIN PEAKS OPENING CREDITS BIRD BRANCH LOCATED?
The scene was shot at Kiana Lodge located at 14976 Sandy Hook Road NE in Poulsbo, Washington. The approximate coordinate are 47°41’57.5″N 122°34’55.5″W.
The red circle on the Google Maps image below shows the approximate location of the branch.
Kiana Lodge was also home to several exterior shots of Blue Pine Lodge (the Packard’s Residence), the giant log where Laura Palmer’s body washed ashore, and some interiors of The Great Northern Hotel from the Pilot episode.
The story of how Charles identified the location needs to be preserved in the Twin Peaks community (click on the image to enlarge).
Here are some of the individual images from the former InTwinPeaks website:
VISITING THE OPENING CREDITS BIRD BRANCH IN JANUARY 22, 2020
I visited this location on January 22, 2020 after a nearly 23 year absence.
It seems these are the same trees that appear in the background of the Pilot episode. With the passage of time they are much taller now.
I believe this branch is the one the crew used. The bark and background details seem similar to the opening credits scene. The branch was hanging down compared to the series (bigger branch today means more weight).
Here’s the view beyond the branch. In the distance is the Agate Pass Bridge which opened in the 1950s.
Here is a closer look at the bridge from my return trip to Kiana Lodge on February 22, 2023.
I also grabbed this shot of the bird branch during that visit.
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You my friend, are an amazing legend.
I love the historical details, research and location scouting that had gone into this (including the efforts of other contributors).
Love from your fellow Twin Peaks enthusiast…
– Murray from Melbourne.
I think about this bird a lot.
I think that Melbourne is equatorially kind of similar to the Pacific Northwest, albeit on the other side of the world.
I was thrilled when I first found some Douglas Fir Trees in some local arboretum when I moved out to the mountains outside of the city.
Occasionally I hear birds that sounds like the ones in Twin Peaks. But I’ve never figured out of we have a similar species here.
Your post gets me one step closer to figuring it out.
Wow BOB wow
It is actually the same bird in the final scene of Lynch’s Blue Velvet from 1988, that was what started my looking for the bird.
I can’t believe someone actually identified the place where the bird was filmed and that someone went there in 2020 and took pictures of the place. Thank you. 🙂 I watched Twin Peaks as a teenager in Norway in the 1990s. It was the greatest thing I had seen. Years later I watched it again as an adult and it was even better than I first thought it was. Then I watched season 3 and I just can’t find the right words to describe the experience. The bird was always special to me, not even sure exactly why. It just was and still is.
Hi Steven,
Your i-d of the bird is correct (it could also have been a juvenile male Varied Thrush) and I don’t doubt you found the perch tree. However, I am certain the bird used in the shot was a stuffed (mounted specimen).
The feathering on the side of the throat is disordered or pressed and the eye looks ‘dead’. There is also an erect feather out of place on the back of the head, something you would only see in a bird that has been attacked or in a fight. These aspects are quite obvious to birders when looking at pictures of birds. Thrushes generally perch with their tarsi (legs) upright, not pressed against the branch like that. The stance is not a natural one.
It would be more than a coincidence for a rarely seen Varied Thrush to be perched relatively openly by a footpath, with the bridge view so conveniently in shot. This species is shy and vigilant and singing males would perhaps be on a more exposed perch like that but always within surrounding trees.
Another curious aspect about this individual is it has (had!) an elongated upper mandible, making the bill look longer and hooked, perhaps leading to the initial misidentification of Bewick’s Wren which shows a bill like that. This bill anomaly resulted from a dietary deficiency, probably as a result of the bird being fed by humans, say for example over winter in the snow at a feeding station. It probably didn’t get the right food during its life for some reason. Varied Thrush are known for cleaning their bills on hard surfaces and this would also sharen or snap off an anomaly like that. Maybe its feeding (worm-probing) ability was compromised by the hook. This makes me think the bird died in its first year and was stuffed (mounted) by a taxidermist.
It was much easier to fix it onto the branch for that shot.
Thanks for the amazing blog by the way. I love the Varied Thrush at the start of Twin Peaks 1 & 2 but I’m sure it was a stuffed specimen.