I 
ORNITHOLOGIST 
— AND — 
OOLOGIST. 
$l.nn per 
Annum. 
Joseph M. Wade, Editor and Publisher. 
Established, March, 1875. 
Single Copy, 
10 Cents. 
VOL. VII. 
NORWICH, CONN., AUGUST, 1882. 
NO. 19. 
Large-billed Water Thrush. 
My first acquaintance with this bird w’as 
about ten years ago. I had then collected 
most of the common Warblers and becoine 
acquainted wdth then- 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 jilace 
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 w^as no foliage on 
the tree. It was a dark spot, for the trees 
and shrubbery w'ere 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 uj^ in “ Samuel’s N. E. _ 
Birds,” and he led me a little astray, so 
that in iny 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. Step])ing across this space from one 
stone to another, looking more to my foot¬ 
steps than anything else, I caught a 
glimpse of a bird flitting 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, wdiose 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 female draw’from the mud and work 
into the nest all drij^piug and soft with 
the adhering mud, and wdiich 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 ilhision, and om^e hearing a 
male sing near such an upturned tree. I 
penetrated to the place and carefully 
scanned the surface over without discover¬ 
ing anything ; wdiile one week later hearing 
a bird there again, I made another investi¬ 
gation of the i)lace to find in plain view a 
nest with five young. These leaves when 
