A MARVELOUS choral is the rare ecstasy song of the ovenbird (see Vol. III, 126-7). It was first recorded, at a comparatively recent date, by that versatile writer-poet, essayist, naturalist — Mr. John Burroughs. After speaking of the bird's easy, gliding walk, it being one of the few birds that are walkers, not hoppers, he says its other lark trait, namely, singing in the air, seems not to have been observed by any naturalist. Yet it is a well-established characteristic, and may be verified by any person who will spend a half-hour in the woods where this bird abounds on some June afternoon or evening. I hear it frequently after sundown when the ecstatic singer can hardly be distinguished against the sky. Mounting by easy flights to the top of the tallest tree, he launches into the air, with a sort of suspended, hovering flight, and bursts into a perfect ecstasy of song clear, ringing, copious, rivaling the goldfinch's in vivacity and the linnet's in melody. Its descent after the song is finished is rapid, and precisely like that of the titlark when it sweeps down from its course to alight on the ground.

The same writer speaks of waking up in the night, just in time to hear a golden-crowned thrush, the ovenbird, sing in a tree near by. It sang as loud and cheerily as at midday. My first acquaintance with this rare overture was at the close of a hot day in July, as I was walking with a naturalist. A splendor floated in the air like a musical cloud as strange notes of gladness rang through the twilight with the clearness of a silver bugle. It came again, a clear, sweet, outpouring song, which I recklessly attributed to several goldfinches singing, as they often do, in concert. The trained car of the naturalist was not so easily deceived, and when my attention was called to the more gushing character of the melody I wondered that it could have escaped notice. It was a very irrigation of song, the bursting of some cloud overhead that scattered melodious fragments all about, a mating-choral unheard, probably, after the nesting season is over.

Entering the woods in early summer this bird is sure to shake out its ordinary, rattling chorus — "Teacher, Teacher, TEACHER," the notes delivered with tremendous force and distinctness and the emphasis increasing — a vibrant, crescendo chant as unlike the brilliant ecstasy song as can be imagined.

The ovenbird is also called the golden-crowned thrush, for no conceivable reason unless it is that the bird is not a thrush, but classed with the warblers. Or is it that its white breast, thickly spotted with dusky, resembles the thrush's? There is a peculiar delicacy in the texture of its olive-green robes, as fine as if woven in kings' houses, while, set deep in hues of the raven's wing, it wears that regal appurtenance — a crown of gold.

While watching from a rocky height a pair of hermit thrushes that were housekeeping in a hemlock beneath, an ovenbird flew from a maple bough to a high clump of ferns near by. In its beak was a quantity of dry grass, bulky material that interfered sadly with both walking and flight. The small burden-bearer managed, however, to progress slowly, moving its head from side to side to disentangle the grasses and lifting its little feet in the daintiest manner, until it disappeared where the ferns were thickest. Pretty soon it came in sight again, sauntered about with diverting nonchalance, and was off, alighting upon the same bough to drop down into the same corner of the thicket. This behavior was not without an inference; it was an advertisement of future hopes too plainly written to escape notice; I might have been stone blind and seen straight into the future! The nest must have been within a circle of a few feet, but with rank greenery above and underfoot the accumulated leafage of the ages, soft and penetrative as if placed layer by layer for the bird's special accommodation, any square foot might have held the treasure and kept the secret of possession.