ORNITHOLOGIST 
— AN D — 
OOLOGIST. 
$1.00 per Joseph M. Wade, Editor and Publisher. Single Copy, 
Annum. Established, March, 1875. 10 Cents. 
VOL. VII. NORWICH, CONN., AUGUST, 1882. NO. 19. 
Large-billed Water Thrush. 
My first acquaintance with this bird was 
about ten years ago. I had then collected 
most of the common Warblers and become 
acquainted with their notes so well that 
I readily distinguished anything new. 
Tramping through the woods about the 
middle of April an unfamiliar note reached 
me, and my attention was instantly attract- 
ed by its clearness and strength. Careful- 
ly and cautiously I approached the place 
whence the song issued and traced out the 
singer perched on the dead lower branch 
of a Beech tree, and shaded by the branch- 
es above, though there was no foliage on 
the tree. It was a dark spot, for the trees 
and shrubbery were thick, which was the 
border of a swamp through which a small 
stream slowly found its way. I was great- 
ly charmed with the bird and thought I 
had never heard so fine a singer. Shoot 
him"? Indeed I did not. I went home 
and studied him up in “Samuel’s N. E. 
Birds,” and he led me a little astray, so 
that in my next experience — finding the 
nest and eggs — I simply recorded them 
187, a bird which I had already taken in 
the Fall and never dreamed that this was 
another bird. There was a place where I 
usually crossed the reservoir brook in go- 
ing through the woods, by leaping from 
one jutting rock to another, and thence to 
the opposite shore. This was the narrow- 
est place in the swamp, and right where I 
crossed a tree had been prostrated by the 
wind, leaving a shallow pool of water with 
jutting stone, so that it was easy to pass 
over. Stepping across this space from one 
stone to another, looking more to my foot- 
steps than anything else, I caught a 
glimpse of a bird Hitting across my path 
like a shadow, and out of sight in an in- 
stant. I did not see what it was, whence 
it came, nor whither it went, but when the 
next day the same thing occurred in the 
same place, I was on the alert and saw 
whence it came, and wasn’t I delighted to 
find snugly concealed in a little nook, the 
cosy nest and five speckled beauties ! The 
tree, whose roots had been removed, had 
left a pool about eight by twelve feet, and 
of course, the roots and mud that had once 
filled this place, now stood perpendicular 
like a wall against the side of the pool, 
and there snugly hidden among those roots 
was the nest, about eighteen inches above 
the water. I have since found a number 
of their nests, and three-fourths of them 
have been in similar situations; some- 
times a little higher above the water, but 
oftener within a foot or less of it. The 
nests are sometimes quite bulky, formed 
of • partially decayed leaves which I have 
seen the fern xle draw from the mud and work 
into the nest all dripping and soft with 
the adhering mud, and which gives the 
nest such a similarity to its surroundings 
as to be scarcely noticeable The color of 
the bird when snugly setting on the nest 
adds to the illusion, and once hearing a 
male sing near such an upturned tree, I 
penetrated to the place and carefully 
scanned the surface over without discover- 
ing anything; while one week later hearing 
a bird there again, I made another investi- 
gation of the place to find in plain view a 
nest with five young. These leaves when 
