Will anyone tell me _why_ this bird with olive back and speckled,
thrush-like breast, is placed in the family _Mniotiltidæ_, or wood
warblers, instead of with the _Turdidæ_, or thrushes? And why is the
"water thrush" also classed with wood warblers, when his olive back
and speckled breast make him seem almost a twin brother to the oven
bird, while both are so unlike other members of the warbler family,
and so much resemble the true thrushes? It was at Glen Haven, beside a
mountain brook tumbling down into Skaneateles Lake that I had my first
and only view of a water thrush.
His clear song, repeatedly ringing out above the noisy music of the
brook, kept luring me onward and upward over the rough banks, till at
length I saw the little walker peering about among the stones for his
food. Another bird closely resembling the thrushes and bearing the
name, yet placed in _another family_, is the brown thrasher, or thrush.
I look in my book for his classification. Family _Troglodytidæ_! I can
scarcely believe my eyes! Can any one give me any earthly reason _why_
the ornithologists in their wisdom have seen fit to place this bird,
with his reddish brown back, speckled breast and beautiful thrush-like
song, in the same family with catbirds and wrens? Truly the mysteries
of ornithology are past my comprehension.
To return to our "teacher." My acquaintance with him has not yet
advanced to the stage of finding him "at home" in his dwelling. As
Neltje Blanchan says, "it is only by a happy accident" that one
might "discover the little ball of earth raised above the ground,
but concealed by leaves and twigs and resembling a Dutch oven, which
gives the bird its name of oven-bird." Last summer at Pigeon Cove the
warning cries of a mother-bird led me to suspect a nest, but I failed
to find it. The brood had evidently left their home, for a sudden
loud outcry from the mother-bird startled me as the little thrushes
scurried out of the path from almost under my feet, while Madame
Thrush fluttered about with a pretense of a broken wing to distract my
attention. Her "trailing" was quite effective, for by the time I had
turned my attention from her performance to the babies, they were quite
out of sight.
[Illustration: MUSKRAT.
1/3 Life-size.
FROM COL. F. NUSSBAUMER & SON.
A. W. MUMFORD, PUBLISHER, CHICAGO.
COPYRIGHT 1900, BY
NATURE STUDY PUB. CO., CHICAGO.]