240 OVENBIRD. 
woods just behind my house at Freistatt, Mo., swarmed with Ovenbirds, searching in 
loose flocks for food among the old leaves. Only a few pairs remajned to breed. During 
these beautiful April days the orchards were white and rosy with blossoms, and their 
“loud accelerated chant with which the birds proclaim the nuptial season’’ echoed 
through all the thickets and woods. These notes, sounding like I see, I see, I see, I see, 
commence low, grow gradually louder and louder and end very shrill. They even entered 
my garden and searched among flowering lilies of the valley, polyanthus narzissus, 
ponies, yuccas, and underneath pretty specimens of mock-orange bushes, Chinese 
fragrant and Standish’s honey-suckles, for all kinds of inseéts. In their summer haunts 
in central Wisconsin I never saw them before May 10. During migration they even 
come into the city gardens where they run about on the ground like small Thrushes. 
In Chicago an Ovenbird came through the open window into the interior of my room 
in search for flies. This was on a very fine September day. In south-eastern Texas 
I saw the first migrants about Sept. 20, and the last stragglers left about Oct. 25. 
The food of the Ovenbird consists almost entirely of inseéts living on or near the 
ground. Very frequently it is searching for food among the almost decayed leaves and 
underneath ferns and other low growing plants. It is a very conspicuous bird in its 
haunts, being very inquisitive, easy to ‘observe, and one of the most emphatic songsters 
of the woods. Its notes are always associated with charming tra&s of woodland and 
beautiful summer days. Even in the silence of the noon its notes echo through the 
woods, and, bursting upon the ear, they disperse all melancholy thoughts as if by 
enchantment. The bird sings all day long, but most diligently when the twilight of the 
evening falls. Its common chant is heard while the bird walks over the ground in 
search of insects, but its rare and beautiful song is poured forth from the tops of tall 
forest trees, usually after sundown. Our older ornithologists had no knowledge of this 
song, and only very lately the discovery of its wonderful vocal powers were made 
independently by Mr. John Burroughs and by Mr. George Boardman. 
“Coming to a drier and less mossy place in the woods,” says Mr. Burroughs, “I am 
amused with a Golden-crowned Thrush,—which, however, is no Thrush at all, but a 
Warbler, the Ovenbird. He walks on the ground ahead of me with such an easy gliding 
motion, and with such an unconscious, preoccupied air, jerking his head like a hen or 
a partridge, now hurrying, now slackening his pace, that I pause to observe him. If I 
sit down, he pauses to observe me, and extends his pretty ramblings on all sides, 
apparently very much engrossed with his own affairs, but never losing sight of me. 
But few of the birds are walkers, most being hoppers, like the Robin. 
“Satisfied that I have no hostile intentions, the pretty pedestrian mounts a limb 
a few feet from the ground, and gives me the benefit of one of his musical performances, 
a sort of accelerating chant. Commencing in a very low key, which makes him seem 
at a very uncertain distance, he grows louder and louder, till his body quakes and his 
chant runs into shriek, ringing in my ear with a peculiar sharpness. This lay may be 
represented thus: ‘Teacher, teacher, TEACHER, TEACHER, TEACHER!’—the accent of 
the first syllable and each word uttered with increased force and shrillness. No writer 
with whom I am acquainted gives him credit for more musical ability than is displayed 
in this strain. Yet in this the half is not told.. He has a far rarer song, which he 
