Brown, Olive or Grayish Brown, and Brown and Gray Sparrowy Birds 



Mississippi. There they stay all summer, often travelling south- 

 ward with the sparrows in the autumn, as in the spring. 



Why they should prefer coniferous trees, unless to utilize the 

 needles for a nest, is not understood. Low trees and bushes are 

 favorite building sites with them as with others of the family, 

 though these thrushes disdain a mud lining to their nests. Those 

 who have heard the olive-backed thrush singing an even-song 

 to its brooding mate compare it with the veery's, but it has a 

 break in it and is less simple and pleasing than the latter's. 



Louisiana Water ThrusFi 

 (Seiurus motacilla) Wood Warbler family 



Length — 6 to 6.28 inches. Just a trifle smaller than the English 

 sparrow. 



Male and Female — Grayish olive-brown upper parts, with con- 

 spicuous white line over the eye and reaching almost to the 

 nape. Underneath white, tinged with pale buff. Throat 

 and line through the middle, plain. Other parts streaked 

 with very dark brown, rather faintly on the breast, giving 

 them the speckled breast of the thrushes. Heavy, dark bill. 



Range — United States, westward to the plains ; northward to 

 southern New England. Winters in the tropics. 



Migrations — Late April. October. Summer resident. 



This bird, that so delighted Audubon with its high-trilled 

 song as he tramped with indefatigable zeal through the hammocks 

 of the Gulf States, seems to be almost the counterpart of the 

 Northern water thrush, just as the loggerhead is the Southern 

 counterpart of the Northern shrike. Very many Eastern birds 

 have their duplicates in Western species, as we all know, and it is 

 most interesting to trace the slight external variations that differ- 

 ent climates and diet have produced on the same bird, and thus 

 differentiated the species. In winter the Northern water thrush 

 visits the cradle of its kind, the swamps of Louisiana and Florida, 

 and, no doubt, by daily contact with its congeners there, keeps 

 close to their cherished traditions, from which it never deviates 

 farther than Nature compels, though it penetrate to the arctic 

 regions during its summer journeys. 



With a more southerly range, the Louisiana water thrush 

 does not venture beyond the White Mountains and to the shores 

 of the Great Lakes in summer, but even at the North the same 



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