Called also: GOLDEN-CROWNED THRUSH; THE TEACHER; WOOD WAGTAIL;
GOLDEN-CROWNED WAGTAIL; GOLDEN-CROWNED ACCENTOR
Length -- 6 to 6.15 inches. Just a shade smaller than the English
sparrow.
Male and Female -- Upper parts olive, with an orange-brown crown,
bordered by black lines that converge toward the bill. Under
parts white; breast spotted and streaked on the sides. White
eye-ring.
Range -- United States, to Pacific slope.
Migrations -- May. October. Common summer resident.
Early in May you may have the good fortune to see this little bird of the
woods strutting in and out of the garden shrubbery with a certain mock
dignity, like a child wearing its father's boots. Few birds can walk without
appearing more or less ridiculous, and however gracefully and prettily it
steps, this amusing little wagtail is no exception. When seen at all -- which
is not often, for it is shy -- it is usually on the ground, not far from the
shrubbery or a woodland thicket, under which it will quickly dodge out of
sight at the merest suspicion of a footstep. To most people the bird is only a
voice calling, "TEACHER TEACHER. TEACHER, TEACHER, TEACHER!" as Mr. Burroughs
has interpreted the notes that go off in pairs like a series of little
explosions, softly at first, then louder and louder and more shrill until the
bird that you at first thought far away seems to be shrieking his penetrating
crescendo into your very ears. But you may look until you are tired before you
find him in the high, dry wood, never near water.
In the driest parts of the wood, here the ground is thickly carpeted with dead
leaves, you may some day notice a little bunch of them, that look as if a
plant, in pushing its way up through the ground, had raised the leaves,
rootlets, and twigs a trifle.
Examine the spot more carefully, and on one side you find an opening, and
within the ball of earth, softly lined with grass, lie four or five
cream-white, speckled eggs. It is only by a happy accident that this nest of
the ovenbird is discovered. The concealment could not be better. It is this
peculiarity of nest construction -- in shape like a Dutch oven -- that has
given the bird what DeKay considers its "trivial name." Not far from the nest
the parent birds scratch about in the leaves like diminutive barnyard fowls,
for the grubs and insects hiding under them. But at the first suspicion of an
intruder their alarm becomes pitiful. Panic-stricken, they become fairly limp
with fear, and drooping her wings and tail, the mother-bird drags herself
hither and thither over the ground.
As utterly bewildered as his mate, the male darts, flies, and tumbles about
through the low branches, jerking and wagging his tail in nervous spasms until
you have beaten a double-quick retreat.
In nesting time, at evening, a very few have heard the "luxurious nuptial
song" of the ovenbird; but it is a song to haunt the memory forever afterward.
Burroughs appears to be the first writer to record this "rare bit of bird
melody." "Mounting by easy flight to the top of the tallest tree," says the
author of "Wake-Robin," "the ovenbird launches into the air with a sort of
suspended, hovering flight, like certain of the finches, and bursts into a
perfect ecstasy of song -- clear, ringing, copious, rivalling the goldfinch's
in vivacity and the linnet's in melody."