THE WARBLERS 61 



•eason in May and June, when he calls most loudly and 

 frequently. Beginning quite softly, he gradually in- 

 creases the intensity of each pair of notes in a crescendo 

 that seems to come from a point much nearer than it really 

 does. Once heard it is never forgotten, and you can al- 

 ways be siu-e of naming at least this bird by his voice alone. 

 However, his really exquisite love song — a clear, ringing, 

 vivacious melody, uttered while the singer is fluttering, 

 hovering, high among the tree-tops — ^is rarely heard, or if 

 heard is not recognized as the teacher's aerial serenade. 

 He is a warbler, let it be recorded, who really can sing. 



In the highest, driest parts of the wood, where the 

 ground is thickly carpeted with dead leaves, you may some 

 day notice a little bunch of them, that look as if a plant, 

 in pushing its way up through the ground, had raised the 

 leaves, rootlets, and twigs a trifle. Examine the spot more 

 carefully, and on one side you find an opening, and within 

 the ball of earth, softly lined with grass. He four or five 

 cream-white speckled eggs. It is only by a happy accident 

 that this nest of the oven-bird is discovered. The con- 

 cealment could not be better. It is this peculiarity of nest 

 construction — in shape like a Dutch oven — ^that has given 

 the bird what DeKay considers its "trivial name." Not 

 far from the nest the parent birds scratch about in the 

 leaves, like diminutive barnyard fowls, for the grubs and 

 insects hiding imder them. But at the first suspicion of 

 an intruder their alarm becomes pitiful. Panic-stricken, 

 they become fairly limp with fear, and drooping her wings 

 and tail, the mother bird drags herself hither and thither 

 over the ground. In happier moments they walk prettily, 

 daintily, like a French dancing master, and nod their little 

 heads as if marking time. 



