WAYS OF NATURE 
which a rocket emits before its grand burst of color 
at the top of its flight. 
It is interesting to note that this bird is quite 
lark-like in its color and markings, having the two 
lateral white quills in the tail, and it has the habit 
of elevating the feathers on the top of the head so 
as to suggest a crest. The solitary skylark that I 
discovered several years ago in a field near me was 
seen on several occasions paying his addresses to 
one of these birds, but the vesper-bird was shy, and 
eluded all his advances. 
Probably the perch-songster among our ordinary 
birds that is most regularly seized with the fit of 
ecstasy that results in this lyric burst in the air, as 
I described in my first book, “ Wake Robin,” over 
thirty years ago, is the oven-bird, or wood-accentor 
— the golden-crowned thrush of the old ornitholo- 
gists. Every loiterer about the woods knows this 
pretty, speckled-breasted, olive-backed little bird, 
which walks along over the dry leaves a few yards 
from him, moving its head as it walks, like a minia- 
ture domestic fowl. Most birds are very stiff-necked, 
like the robin, and as they run or hop upon the 
ground, carry the head as if it were riveted to the 
body. Not so the oven-bird, or the other birds that 
walk, as the cow-bunting, or the quail, or the crow. 
They move the head forward with the movement 
of the feet. The sharp, reiterated, almost screech- 
ing song of the oven-bird, as it perches on a limb a 
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