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NORTHERN WATER-THRUSH 



I recall a Northern Water-Thrush which boarded a steamer on 

 which I was sailing from Tampico, Mexico, to Havana, when we were 

 about midway between these two points. The bird, apparently quite 

 at home, hopped about the steamer's deck, entered the Captain's cabin, 

 as though to examine the charts, and when we approached the coast 

 of Cuba, disappeared, doubtless resuming its more northern flight. 



Brewster 3 says that at Cambridge they never fail to visit his 

 garden in "both spring and autumn, occurring there most numerously 

 in August, when I have known as many as six or seven to be present 

 at one time. We meet with them oftenest and most abundantly, how- 

 ever, in dense thickets covering swampy or, at least, very low, damp 

 ground, usually not far from water. In the Fresh Pond swamps and 

 along the willow-shaded causeway that crosses Rock Meadow, they 

 literally swarm for days in succession at the height of the spring mi- 

 gration. The loud, rapid, musical songs of the males may then be 

 heard coming from several directions at once, and the birds be seen 

 darting from thicket to thicket or walking demurely about the edges 

 of shallow pools, tilting their tails incessantly." 



Gerald Thayer (MS.) writes: "This brilliant songster of the 

 wilderness is a local and uncommon summer resident about Monad- 

 nock's northern base haunting some of the deep woodland bogs where 

 Parulas are commonest, and the borders of a few big brooks in the 

 heavier and drier forest. Like the Oven-bird and the Louisiana Water- 

 Thrush, it is for the most part a ground bird and a ivalker. Its nest 

 I have never seen, though I've spent many midsummer afternoons, 

 mosquito-tortured, in its nesting places, watching it trip about among 

 black puddles, and hearing its vivid sudden song. Though our bird 

 is less shy than the southern kind, it is, in my experience, out and 

 away the shyest Warbler of the North Woods." 



Song. The Water-Thrush is one of the notable musicians among 

 the Warblers. While its song lacks the ringing wildness of that of 

 Seiurus motacilla I have come to agree with the opinion quoted from 

 William Brewster under that species, that noveboracensis is the finer 

 singer of the two. 



The sharp, steely alarm-note, clink, is perhaps not quite so pene- 

 trating as the essentially similar call of Seiurus motacilla. So far as 

 my experience goes the Prothonotary is the only other Warbler with 

 a similar call-note. 



"At its best the song of this species is not quite so fine, perhaps, 

 as that of Seiurus motacilla it is very different, and has a rare grace 

 and vigor of its own. Like the Oven-bird the Northern Water- 



