Hints to Audubon Workers. 



157 



low-pitched conversational trilling teach' er^ 

 teach' er. By increasing the confusion, this 

 adds greatly to the effect of excitement 

 spoken of by Mr. Bicknell. Though most 

 common at evening or in the night, I have 

 frequently heard this medley in both morn- 

 ing and afternoon. 



The rhythm and volume of this interest- 

 ing song in its simplest form may be sug- 

 gested by the syllables whee'he, whee'he, 

 whee'ha, he' he' ha, increasing in volume to- 

 ward the middle and diminishing in inten- 

 sity again at the close, unlike the ordinary 

 trill. 



Ordinarily the trill is the clue that helps 

 you in looking for the ovenbird. When 

 you hear it close at hand, and you fail to 

 see him on a tree, look about carefully on 

 the ground among the bushes; and if you 

 see a bird, the size of the white-throated 

 sparrow, walking, scratching like a hen 

 among the dead leaves, or tossing them 

 aside with his bill, you may be quite sure 

 that you have found your friend. On closer 

 inspection he proves to have an olive-green 

 back and a white breast, spotted thickly 

 like a thrush's. His crown is orange-brown 

 and has two black stripes converging to- 

 ward the bill. This, however, is generally 

 obscure. 



The house of the ovenbird, from which 

 he gets his name, varies in style of roofing, 

 but the commonest type of architecture 

 may well be represented by the first nest 

 I ever found. It was a bright morning in 

 June, and while walking through the edge 

 of a grove of young maples, a brown shadow 

 started up from under my feet and disap- 

 peared in the woods. On looking down I 

 saw, by the side of a blooming Solomon's 

 seal, what at the first glance seemed to be 

 a bunch of dry leaves — one of the thousand 

 that are pushed up by mice, or the crowd- 

 ing spring flowers, and that you flatten 

 down every few steps in an undergrowth 

 woods. The hint given by the fleeting 

 shadow, however, could not be ignored, 



and I stooped down to examine the bunch. 

 I felt it over eagerly — one, two, three sides, 

 no opening; the fourth, my fingers slipped 

 in — it was the famous ovenbird's nest that 

 I had been looking for ever since I was a 

 child. In an instant I was on my hands 

 and knees peering into the mysterious hole. 

 How interesting ! There lay five exquisite 

 little eggs, their irregular brown speckles 

 centering in a crown about the larger end. 

 What a wonderful architect the little crea- 

 ture seemed ! Her snug house had an 

 arched roof lined so smoothly with soft 

 dry leaves as to suggest a fretwork ceil- 

 ing. What a tiny palace of beauty the 

 golden-crowned queen of the thrushes had 

 made ! What mystery that bunch of leaves 

 contained! The little brown lady might 

 have been sitting at the mouth of a fairy 

 cave. The next day three of the eggs 

 were hatched, and such absurd looking 

 little things might well have been taken for 

 bird gnomes. They seemed all mouth and 

 eyeball. Little red appendages took the 

 place of wings, and tufts of gray down on 

 the skin covering the eyeballs answered for 

 a coat of feathers. Even when they were 

 feebly throwing up their heads and opening 

 their great yellow throats for worms, their 

 eyes were closed fast, giving them an un- 

 canny appearance. 



The same day I had the good fortune to 

 stumble upon another nest. This was of 

 substantially the same character, though 

 built more of fine roots. I made several 

 visits to the first brood, and when the little 

 ones had flown, found to my surprise that 

 the grass around the mouth of the nest had 

 been pulled together, so as to leave only a 

 round hole just large enough for the bird 

 to go in and out. Why had this been done ? 

 For some time I was quite at a loss to ac- 

 count for it, but I had noticed from the 

 outset that this bird acted differently from 

 any mother ovenbirds I had ever seen. 

 During all my visits to her nest I had 

 never known her to utter a syllable or 



