(_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
sulphur-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 southward.
_Migrations_--Late April. October. Summer resident.
According to the books we have before us, a warbler; but who, to look
at his speckled throat and breast, would ever take him for anything
but a diminutive thrush; or, studying him from some distance through
the opera-glasses as he runs in and out of the little waves along the
brook or river shore, would not name him a baby sandpiper? The rather
unsteady motion of his legs, balancing of the tail, and sudden jerking
of the head suggest an aquatic bird rather than a bird of the woods.
But to really know either man or beast, you must follow him to his
home, and if you have pluck enough to brave the swamp and the almost
impenetrable tangle of undergrowth where the water thrush chooses to
nest, there "In the swamp in secluded recesses, a shy and hidden bird
is warbling a song;" and this warbled song that Walt Whitman so adored
gives you your first clue to the proper classification of the bird. It
has nothing in common with the serene, hymn-like voices of the true
thrushes; the bird has no flute-like notes, but an emphatic smacking
or chucking kind of warble. For a few days only is this song heard
about the gardens and roadsides of our country places. Like the
Louisiana water thrush, this bird never ventures near the homes of men
after the spring and autumn migrations, but, on the contrary, goes as
far away from them as possible, preferably to some mountain region,
beside a cool and dashing brook, where a party of adventurous young
climbers from a summer hotel or the lonely trout fisherman may startle
it from its mossy nest on the ground.