Brown, Olive or Grayish Brown, and Brown and Gray Sparrowy Birds 
woods often contain both birds, and there is opportunity to note 
just how much they differ. The Southern bird is slightly the 
larger, possibly an inch ; it is more gray, and it lacks a few of the 
streaks, notably on the throat, that plentifully speckle its Northern 
counterpart; but the habits of both of these birds appear to be 
identical. Only for a few days in the spring or autumn migra- 
tions do they pass near enough to our homes for us to study 
them, and then we must ever be on the alert to steal a glance at 
them through the opera-glasses, for birds more shy than they 
do not visit the garden shrubbery at any season. Only let them 
suspect they are being stared at, and they are under cover in a 
twinkling. 
Where mountain streams dash through tracts of mossy, 
spongy ground that is carpeted with fern and moss, and over- 
grown with impenetrable thickets of underbrush and tangles of 
creepers — such a place is the favorite resort of both the water 
thrushes. With a rubber boot missing, clothes torn, and temper 
by no means unruffled, you finally stand over the Louisiana 
thrush’s nest in the roots of an upturned tree immediately over 
the water, or else in a mossy root-belaced bank above a purling 
stream. A liquid-trilled warble, wild and sweet, breaks the still- 
ness, and, like Audubon, you feel amply rewarded for your pains, 
though you may not be prepared to agree with him in thinking 
the song the equal of the European nightingale’s. 
Northern Water Thrush 
(Seiurus noveboracensis) Wood Warbler family 
Called also : NEW YORK WATER THRUSH ; AQUATIC 
WOOD WAGTAIL ; AQUATIC THRUSH 
Length — 5 to 6 inches. A trifle smaller than the English sparrow. 
Male and Female — Uniform olive or grayish brown above. Pale 
buff line over the eye. Underneath, white tinged with sul- 
phur-yellow, and streaked like a thrush with very dark brown 
arrow-headed or oblong spots that are also seen underneath 
wings. 
Range — United States, westward to Rockies and northward 
through British provinces. Winters from Gulf States south- 
ward. 
Migrations — Late April. October. Summer resident. 
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