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 

 40 



