Plate LXV. 



SIURUS AURICAPILLUS-Golden-crowned Thrush. 



The Golden-crowned Thrush, or Ovenbird, as this species is sometimes called, from the resemblance 



of its nest to an old-fashioned oven, arrives the last of April or the first of May, and, during the summer 

 is a common resident. It departs for its southern home about the first week in September, unless the 

 weather is exceptionally fine, in which case it may remain several weeks later. During its residence here 

 each pair usually rears but a single brood of young, but if the first set of eggs should be destroyed a 

 second nest is soon built. This fact accounts for many of the late nests, but it is probable that two 

 broods are occasionally hatched by a single pair of birds. Ordinarily oviposition is completed by the 

 20th of May, and early in June the young are hatched. 



LOCALITY : 



The nest is built in dense, solitary woods, old timberland, in which there are little ravines, prostrate, 

 decayed trunks of trees, and considerable underbrush being preferred; but these birds are so plentiful 

 that the nest may be found in almost any upland wood not cleared for pasture. 



POSITION : 



The nest is placed on the ground at the foot of a bush or sapling, beside a log, or among the leaves 

 and grass in a thicket of bushes. 



MATERIALS : 



Leaves, leaf-stems, grass, twigs, hair, lichens, moss, and fibres and shreads from various plants 

 compose the materials of construction. Externally the nest is chiefly leaves, while within it is lined with 

 grass, and sometimes horse-hair and fibres. Between these two layers may be found in various proportions 

 any or ail of the materials mentioned above. The whole is loosely interwoven and matted into a some- 

 what egg-shaped mass, with an entrance to its interior at the larger end, somewhat above its axis. Its 

 external diameter is from five to seven inches. Within, the cavity is globular, and from three to three 

 and one-half inches in diameter, while the doorway is from one and one-half to two inches in diameter. 

 After the nest becomes a few days old the entrance becomes oval, the shortest diameter being perpendicular, 

 this is due to the weight of the roof; rarely a nest is built without the domed roof. 



EGGS : 



The complement of eggs is four or five. When blown the shell is white, fairly well polished and 

 of firm texture. They measure in long-diameter from .76 to .84 of an inch, and in short-diameter, from .50 

 to .60. A common size is .55 x .80. The markings consist of blotches, spots, and speckles of different 

 shades of reddish-brown, those beneath the surface appear grey. Usually they are limited to the larger 



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