Burroughs Quote Index

Complete Quote Index for Return of the Birds: A John Burroughs Wake-Robin Revival

Includes extracted quotes from the book Return of the Birds: A John Burroughs Wake-Robin Revival
Extraction Date: February 11, 2026
Source: Return of the Birds: A John Burroughs Wake-Robin Revival
Total Quotes: 811

Essays Covered:

Text	Quote ID Range
Preface to the First Edition	P-001 to P-007
Introduction	IN-001 to IN-004
Return of the Birds	1-001 to 1-136
In the Hemlocks	2-001 to 2-144
The Adirondacks	3-001 to 3-060
Birds’-Nests	4-001 to 4-153
Spring in the Capital	5-001 to 5-077
Birch Browsings	6-001 to 6-049
The Bluebird	7-001 to 7-080
The Invitation	8-001 to 8-102

Preface and Methodology

Preface

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
P-001	This is mainly a book about the Birds, or more properly an invitation to the study of Ornithology, and the purpose of the author will be carried out in proportion as it awakens and stimulates the interest of the reader in this branch of Natural History.
P-002	Though written less in the spirit of exact science than with the freedom of love and old acquaintance, yet I have in no instance taken liberties with facts, or allowed my imagination to influence me to the extent of giving a false impression or a wrong coloring.
P-003	what I offer, in fact, is a careful and conscientious record of actual observations and experiences, and is true as it stands written, every word of it.
P-004	But what has interested me most in Ornithology is the pursuit, the chase, the discovery; that part of it which is akin to hunting, fishing, and wild sports, and which I could carry with me in my eye and ear wherever I went.
P-005	I have done what I could to bring home the ‘river and sky’ with the sparrow I heard ‘singing at dawn on the alder bough.’
P-006	In other words, I have tried to present a live bird—a bird in the woods or the fields—with the atmosphere and associations of the place, and not merely a stuffed and labeled specimen.
P-007	the white Trillium, which blooms in all our woods, and which marks the arrival of all the birds.

Introduction

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
IN-001	It enabled me to live over again the days I had passed with the birds and in the scenes of my youth.
IN-002	How my mind reacted from the iron wall in front of me, and sought solace in memories of the birds and of summer fields and woods!
IN-003	If I name every bird I see in my walk, describe its color and ways, etc., give a lot of facts or details about the bird, it is doubtful if my reader is interested.
IN-004	But if I relate the bird in some way to human life, to my own life, show what it is to me and what it is in the landscape and the season, then do I give my reader a live bird and not a labeled specimen.

Birds (General)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
2-043	But few of the birds are walkers, most being hoppers, like the robin.
2-089	Walking the other day in an old hemlock wood, I counted over forty varieties of these summer visitants, many of them common to other woods in the vicinity, but quite a number peculiar to these ancient solitudes, and not a few that are rare in any locality.
2-090	June, of all the months, the student of ornithology can least afford to lose. Most birds are nesting then, and in full song and plumage.
2-091	A bird’s song contains a clue to its life, and establishes a sympathy, an understanding, between itself and the listener.
2-092	The same temperature, though under different parallels, usually attracts the same birds; difference in altitude being equivalent to the difference in latitude.
2-132	Most people receive with incredulity a statement of the number of birds that annually visit our climate. Very few even are aware of half the number that spend the summer in their own immediate vicinity.
2-133	what rare and elegant visitants from Mexico, from Central and South America, and from the islands of the sea, are holding their reunions in the branches over our heads, or pursuing their pleasure on the ground before us.
2-134	A given height above the sea-level under the parallel of thirty degrees may have the same climate as places under that of thirty-five degrees, and similar flora and fauna.
2-135	Half a day’s drive to the southeast brings me down into quite a different temperature, with an older geological formation, different forest timber, and different birds, even with different mammals.
2-136	Most birds sing with the greatest spirit and vivacity in the forenoon, though there are occasional bursts later in the day in which nearly all voices join; while it is not till the twilight that the full power and solemnity of the thrush’s hymn is felt.
1-001	Spring in our northern climate may fairly be said to extend from the middle of March to the middle of June. At least, the vernal tide continues to rise until the latter date, and it is not till after the summer solstice that the shoots and twigs begin to harden and turn to wood, or the grass to lose any of its freshness and succulency.
1-002	It is this period that marks the return of the birds, one or two of the more hardy or half-domesticated species, like the song sparrow and the bluebird, usually arriving in March, while the rarer and more brilliant wood-birds bring up the procession in June.
1-008	Yet the coming and going of the birds is more or less a mystery and a surprise. We go out in the morning, and no thrush or vireo is to be heard; we go out again, and every tree and grove is musical; yet again, and all is silent.
1-057	There can be no doubt that the presence of man has exerted a very marked and friendly influence upon them, since they so multiply in his society.
1-065	With June the cup is full… The perfection of the season, among other things, has brought the perfection of the song and plumage of the birds.
1-100	The distribution of plants in a given locality is not more marked and defined than that of the birds.
1-129	After the cricket has commenced to drone his monotonous refrain… melody gradually ceases. The young are out of the nest and must be cared for, and the molting season is at hand.
1-136	The songsters of the seed-time are silent at the reaping of the harvest… The birds, in a new but less holiday suit, turn their faces southward.
4-049	It usually happens, when the male of any species is killed during the breeding season, that the female soon procures another mate.
4-059	In migrating northward, the males precede the females by eight or ten days; returning in the fall, the females and young precede the males by about the same time.
4-111	The simple art of the bird consists in choosing common, neutral tinted material, as moss, dry leaves, twigs, and various odds and ends, and placing the structure on a convenient branch, where it blends in color with its surroundings; but how consummate is this art, and how skillfully is the nest concealed!

2. ALPHABETICAL SPECIES INDEX (A-Z)

American Crow (Corvus brachyrhynchos)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
5-008	The crows are abundant here all winter, but are not very noticeable except as they pass high in air to and from their winter quarters in the Virginia woods.
5-009	In spring these diurnal mass movements cease; the clan breaks up, the rookery is abandoned, and the birds scatter broadcast over the land.
2-017	Even the crow does not winter here, and is seldom seen after December or before March.
4-086	The blue jay now and then lays in an old crow’s nest or cuckoo’s nest.
8-013	The cawing of a crow makes him feel at home, while a new note or a new song drowns all care.
8-098	The crows at this season are in the same condition. It is estimated that a crow needs at least half a pound of meat per day, but it is evident that for weeks and months during the winter and spring they must subsist on a mere fraction of this amount.
4-023	Though the nest is not especially an artistic work, requiring strength rather than skill, yet the eggs and the young of few other birds are so completely housed from the elements, or protected from their natural enemies, the jays, crows, hawks, and owls.
4-088	The crow blackbird, seized with a fit of indolence, drops its eggs in the cavity of a decayed branch.
5-022	Among the first birds that make their appearance in Washington is the crow blackbird. He may come any time after the 1st of March.
5-023	The birds congregate in large flocks, and frequent groves and parks, alternately swarming in the treetops and filling the air with their sharp jangle.
5-024	All parks and public grounds about the city are full of blackbirds. They are especially plentiful in the trees about the White House, breeding there and waging war on all other birds.
5-025	They build a nest of coarse sticks and mud, the whole burden of the enterprise seeming to devolve upon the female.

American Goldfinch (Spinus tristis)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
4-007	Excepting the American goldfinch, this bird builds later in the spring than any other, its nest, in our northern climate, seldom being undertaken till July.
4-009	As with the goldfinch, the reason is, probably, that suitable food for the young cannot be had at an earlier period.
5-017	Among some pines just beyond the boundary, saw a number of American goldfinches, in their gray winter dress, pecking the pinecones.
8-006	There was the robin, the blue jay, the bluebird, the yellowbird, the cherry-bird, the catbird, the chipping bird, the woodpecker, the high-hole, an occasional redbird, and a few others, in the woods up along their borders, but whoever dreamed that there were still others that not even the hunters saw, and whose names no one had ever heard.
1-067	often the goldfinch, the kingbird, the scarlet tanager delay their coming till then

American Pipit (Anthus rubescens)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
8-087	…the American pipit, or titlark, a slender brown bird, about the size of the sparrow, which passes through the States in the fall and spring, to and from its breeding haunts in the far north.
8-088	As they fly up, they show two or his white quills in the tail, like the vesper sparrow.
8-089	Flying over, they utter a single chirp or cry every few rods. They breed in the bleak, moss-covered rocks of Labrador.
8-090	The male launches into the air, and gives forth a brief but melodious song, after the manner of all larks. They are walkers.

American Redstart (Setophaga ruticilla)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
8-020	Throughout the Middle and Eastern States, half a dozen species or so may be found in almost every locality, as the redstart, the Maryland yellow-throat, the yellow warbler… the hooded warbler, the black and white creeping warbler…

American Robin (Turdus migratorius)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
1-007	With me this flower is associated, not merely with the awakening of Robin, for he has been awake some weeks, but with the universal awakening and rehabilitation of nature.
1-015	They wage war against robins and wrens
1-019	Not long after the bluebird comes the robin, sometimes in March, but in most of the Northern States, April is the month of the robin.
1-020	In large numbers they scour the fields and groves. You hear their piping in the meadow, in the pasture, on the hillside. Walk in the woods, and the dry leaves rustle with the whir of their wings, the air is vocal with their cheery call.
1-021	in a spirit of utter abandonment, he carols his simple strain. And sitting thus amid the stark, silent trees, above the wet, cold earth, with the chill of winter still in the air, there is no fitter or sweeter songster in the whole year round.
1-022	Robin is one of the most native and democratic of our birds; he is one of the family, and seems much nearer to us than those rare, exotic visitants, as the orchard starling or rose-breasted grosbeak
1-025	Hardy, noisy, frolicsome, neighborly, and domestic in his habits, strong of wing and bold in spirit, he is the pioneer of the thrush family
1-026	I could wish Robin less native and plebeian in one respect, the building of his nest. Its coarse material and rough masonry are creditable neither to his skill as a workman nor to his taste as an artist.
1-028	At least I demand of him as clean and handsome a nest as the kingbird’s
1-032	he is no aristocrat, but one of the people; and therefore we should expect stability in his workmanship, rather than elegance.
1-109	More abundant than all other birds, except the robin and catbird
1-121	It may be objected to robin that he is noisy and demonstrative; he hurries away or rises to a branch with an angry note, and flirts his wings in ill-bred suspicion.
4-056	I have seen a fine cock robin paying assiduous addresses to a female bird as late as the middle of July…
4-057	He followed her to the ground, poured into her ear a fine, half-suppressed warble, offered her a worm, flew back to the tree again with a great spread of plumage, hopped around her on the branches, chirruped, chattered, flew gallantly at an intruder, and was back in an instant at her side.
2-014	there is something military in the call of the robin.
3-017	I remember hearing but one robin during the whole trip.
3-018	This was by the Boreas River in the deep forest. It was like the voice of an old friend speaking my name.
4-010	Like most of our common species, as the robin, sparrow, bluebird, pewee, wren, etc., this bird sometimes seeks wild, remote localities in which to rear its young; at others, takes up its abode near that of man.
4-039	But even among birds that neither bore nor mine, but which build a shallow nest on the branch of a tree or upon the ground, as the robin, the finches, the buntings, etc., the ordure of the young is removed to a distance by the parent bird.
4-042	When the robin is seen going away from its brood with a slow heavy flight, entirely different from its manner a moment before on approaching the nest with a cherry or worm, it is certain to be engaged in this office.
4-082	…and I have seen the robin build in similar localities. Others have found its nest in old, abandoned wells.
4-090	I heard of a cuckoo that dispossessed a robin of its nest; of another that set a blue jay adrift.
4-096	In one instance it [the robin’s nest] was composed mainly of long black horse-hairs, arranged in a circular manner, with a lining of fine yellow grass…
5-003	the robin called.
5-037	The robin hops about freely upon the grass… and at intervals, and especially at sunset, carols from the treetops his loud, hearty strain.
6-021	a robin sounded his cheery call near by
6-022	robins, blue jays, and woodpeckers greeted me with their familiar notes.
7-012	The other birds that arrive about the same time — the sparrow, the robin, the phoebe-bird — are clad in neutral tints, gray, brown, or russet
8-003	There was the robin, the blue jay, the bluebird, the yellowbird, the cherry-bird, the catbird, the chipping bird, the woodpecker, the high-hole, an occasional redbird, and a few others, in the woods up along their borders, but whoever dreamed that there were still others that not even the hunters saw, and whose names no one had ever heard.
8-055	See the robin hop along upon the ground, strike an attitude, scratch for a worm, fix his eye upon something before him or upon the beholder, flip his wings suspiciously, fly straight to his perch, or sit at sundown on some high branch caroling his sweet and honest strain, and you have seen what is characteristic of all the thrushes.
8-084	Thus, the varied thrush of the West is our robin, a little differently marked;
6-036	The birds were unusually plentiful and noisy about the head of this lake; robins, blue jays, and woodpeckers greeted me with their familiar notes.

American Woodcock (Scolopax minor)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
2-138	there, a woodcock; [noting tracks in the mud]

Arctic Bluebird (Sialia currucoides)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
7-027	if one goes a little higher up into the mountainous regions of the West, he finds the Arctic bluebird, the ruddy brown on the breast changed to greenish blue, and the wings longer and more pointed

Audubon’s Warbler (Setophaga auduboni)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
3-016	The latter, which was leading its troop of young through a thick undergrowth on the banks of the creek where insects were plenty, was new to me.

Bald Eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
4-145	The bald eagle, also, builds on high rocks, according to Audubon, though Wilson describes the nest of one which he saw near Great Egg Harbor… It was a vast pile of sticks, sods, sedge, grass, reeds, etc., five or six feet high by four broad…

Baltimore Oriole (Icterus galbula)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
1-031	I love his note and ways better even than those of the orchard starling or the Baltimore oriole; yet his nest, compared with theirs, is a half-subterranean hut contrasted with a Roman villa.
4-095	In Georgia, the Baltimore oriole places its nest upon the north side of the tree; in the Middle and Eastern States, it fixes it upon the south or east side, and makes it much thicker and warmer.
4-127	But the nest of nests, the ideal nest, after we have left the deep woods, is unquestionably that of the Baltimore oriole. It is the only perfectly pensile nest we have.
4-128	The Baltimore oriole loves to attach its nest to the swaying branches of the tallest elms, making no attempt at concealment, but satisfied if the position be high and the branch pendent.
4-129	The nest when completed assumes the form of a large, suspended gourd. The walls are thin but firm, and proof against the most driving rain. The mouth is hemmed or overhanded with horse-hair, and the sides are usually sewed through and through with the same.
4-130	She appeared very eager and hasty in her pursuits… Collected her materials without fear or restraint while three men were working in the neighboring walks… Her courage and perseverance were indeed truly admirable.
4-131	If watched too narrowly, she saluted with her usual scolding, tshrr, tshrr, tshrr, seeing no reason, probably, why she should be interrupted in her indispensable occupation.

Bank Swallow (Riparia riparia)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
4-037	With woodpeckers and kindred species, and with birds Chat [that] burrow in the ground, as bank swallows, kingfishers, etc., it is a necessity. The accumulation of the excrement in the nest would prove most fatal to the young.

Barn Swallow (Hirundo rustica)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
4-078	A friend tells me of a pair of barn swallows which, taking a fanciful turn, saddled their nest in the loop of a rope that was pendent from a peg in the peak…
5-031	The barn swallow is heard first, followed in a day or two by the squeaking of the cliff swallow.

Bay-breasted Warbler (Setophaga castanea)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
5-067	For two or three years I have chanced to meet little companies of the bay-breasted warbler, searching for food in an oak wood on an elevated piece of ground. They kept well up among the branches, were rather slow in their movements, and evidently disposed to tarry but a short time.

Black and White Creeping Warbler (Mniotilta varia)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
2-086	Here and there I meet the black and white creeping warbler, whose fine strain reminds me of hair wire. It is unquestionably the finest bird-song to be heard.
2-129	Few insect strains will compare with it in this respect; while it has none of the harsh, brassy character of the latter, being very delicate and tender.
4-112	A black and white creeping warbler suddenly became much alarmed as I approached a crumbling old stump in a dense part of the forest. He alighted upon it, chirped sharply, ran up and down its sides, and finally left it with much reluctance.
4-113	The nest, which contained three young birds nearly fledged, was placed upon the ground, at the foot of the stump, and in such a position that the color of the young harmonized perfectly with the bits of bark, sticks, etc., lying about.
8-024	Throughout the Middle and Eastern States, half a dozen species or so may be found in almost every locality, as the redstart, the Maryland yellow-throat, the yellow warbler… the hooded warbler, the black and white creeping warbler…

Black and Yellow Warbler (Setophaga magnolia)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
2-142	The black and yellow warbler pauses a moment and hastens away;

Black-billed Cuckoo (Coccyzus erythropthalmus)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
1-074	The black-billed is the only species found in my locality, the yellow-billed abounds farther south.
1-077	In June the black-billed makes a tour through the orchard and garden, regaling himself upon the canker-worms. At this time he is one of the tamest of birds
1-079	Notwithstanding the disparity in size and color, the black-billed species has certain peculiarities that remind one of the passenger pigeon. His eye, with its red circle, the shape of his head, and his motions on alighting and taking flight

Black-capped Chickadee (Poecile atricapillus)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
4-073	Yet so wary were they of revealing the locality of their brood, or even of the precise tree that held them, that I lurked around over an hour without gaining a point on them.
4-074	The tree, which was low and wide-branching, and overrun with lichens, appeared at a cursory glance to contain not one dry or decayed limb. Yet there was one a few feet long, in which… I detected a small round orifice.
4-075	Each one, as it started upward, from a sudden impulse, contemptuously saluted the abandoned nest with its excrement.

Black-throated Blue Warbler (Setophaga caerulescens)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
3-014	By a little trout-brook in a low part of the woods adjoining the clearing, I had a good time pursuing and identifying a number of warblers, the speckled Canada, the black-throated blue, the yellow-rumped, and Audubon’s warbler.
2-084	the languid midsummer note of the black-throated blue-back falls on my ear. ‘Twea, twea, twea-e-e!’ in the upward slide, and with the peculiar z-ing of summer insects… It is one of the most languid, unhurried sounds in all the woods.
2-085	He has a preference for dense woods of beech and maple, moves slowly amid the lower branches… His back and crown are dark blue; his throat and breast, black; his belly, pure white; and he has a white spot on each wing.
2-128	Audubon says he has never heard his love-song; but this is all the love song he has… moves slowly amid the lower branches and smaller growths, keeping from eight to ten feet from the ground, and repeating now and then his listless, indolent strain.
5-071	The lower branches of the higher growths and the higher branches of the lower growths are plainly preferred by the black-throated blue-backed warbler, in those localities where he is found.

Black-throated Bunting (Spiza americana)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
5-042	Instead of the bobolink, one encounters here, in the June meadows, the black-throated bunting, a bird closely related to the sparrows and a very persistent if not a very musical songster.
5-043	He perches upon the fences and upon the trees by the roadside, and, spreading his tail, gives forth his harsh strain, which may be roughly worded thus: fsep, fsep, fee, fee, fee.

Black-throated Green-backed Warbler (Setophaga virens)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
2-083	His song is very plain and simple, but remarkably pure and tender… The throat and breast of the male are a rich black like velvet, his face yellow, and his back a yellowish green.
2-118	the other day, in a tall tree in the woods, I discovered the black-throated green-backed warbler devoting itself to this dusky, overgrown foundling.
2-127	His song is very plain and simple, but remarkably pure and tender, and might be indicated by straight lines…
8-032	The finest songster among the Sylvia, according to my notions, is the black-throated greenback. Its song is sweet and clear, but brief.

Blackbird (Icteridae)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
4-094	Large, loose structures, like the nests of the osprey and certain of the herons, have been found with half a dozen nests of the blackbird set in the outer edges…
3-037	I saw blackbirds at this place, and sparrows, and the solitary sandpiper, and the Canada woodpecker, and a large number of hummingbirds.

Blackburnian Warbler (Setophaga fusca)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
2-029	a deep orange or flame-colored throat and breast; the same color showing also in a line over the eye and in his crown; back variegated black and white. The female is less marked and brilliant.
2-030	He has a very fine warble, suggesting that of the redstart, but not especially musical. I find him in no other woods in this vicinity.
2-104	in these dark evergreens his throat and breast show like flame.

Blackpoll Warbler (Setophaga striata)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
8-029	Audubon found the blackpoll warbler breeding in Labrador, and congratulates himself on being the first white man who had ever seen its nest, when these warblers pass north in May, they seem to go singly or in pairs, and their black caps and striped coats show conspicuously.
8-030	When they return in September they are in troops or loose flocks, are of a uniform dull drab or brindlish color, and are very fat. They scour the treetops for a few days, almost eluding the eye by their quick movements, and are gone.

Blue Grosbeak (Passerina caerulea)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
4-105	Among the five, the nest that interested me most was that of the blue grosbeak. Here this bird, which, according to Audubon’s observations in Louisiana, is shy and recluse, affecting remote marshes and the borders of large ponds of stagnant water, had placed its nest in the lowest twig of the lowest branch of a large sycamore, immediately over a great thoroughfare…
4-106	The nest was composed mainly of fragments of newspaper and stalks of grass, and, though so low, was remarkably well concealed by one of the peculiar clusters of twigs and leaves which characterize this tree.
4-107	Another pair of blue grosbeaks built in a graveyard within the city limits… The song of this bird is a rapid, intricate warble, like that of the indigo-bird, though stronger and louder.
4-109	Indeed, these two birds so much resemble each other in color, form, manner, voice, and general habits that, were it not for the difference in size — the grosbeak being nearly as large again as the indigo-bird — it would be a hard matter to tell them apart.
7-022	There is also the blue grosbeak, not much behind the indigo-bird in intensity of color
8-072	Again, he says the song of the blue grosbeak resembles the bobolink’s, which it does about as much as the color of the two birds resembles each other; one is black and white and the other is blue.
4-058	Hour after hour I have seen the mother of a brood of blue grosbeaks pass from the nearest meadow to the tree that held her nest, with a cricket or grasshopper in her bill, while her better-dressed half was singing serenely on a distant tree or pursuing his pleasure amid the branches.

Blue Jay (Cyanocitta cristata)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
4-085	The blue jay now and then lays in an old crow’s nest or cuckoo’s nest.
4-091	I heard of a cuckoo that dispossessed a robin of its nest; of another that set a blue jay adrift.
7-020	in all our woods there is the blue jay
8-004	There was the robin, the blue jay, the bluebird, the yellowbird, the cherry-bird, the catbird, the chipping bird, the woodpecker, the high-hole, an occasional redbird, and a few others, in the woods up along their borders, but whoever dreamed that there were still others that not even the hunters saw, and whose names no one had ever heard.
3-042	Blue jays, two or three small hawks, a solitary wild pigeon, and ruffed grouse were seen along the route.
4-065	Among our own birds, the cuckoos and blue jays build open nests, without presenting any noticeable difference in the coloring of the two sexes.
6-037	The birds were unusually plentiful and noisy about the head of this lake; robins, blue jays, and woodpeckers greeted me with their familiar notes.
6-039	The blue jays found an owl or some wild animal a short distance above me, and, as is their custom on such occasions, proclaimed it at the top of their voices, and kept on till the darkness began to gather in the woods.

Blue Yellow-backed Warbler (Parula americana)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
8-001	It was probably the blue yellow-backed warbler, as I have since found this to be a common bird in those woods; but to my young fancy it seemed like some fairy bird, so curiously marked was it, and so new and unexpected.
8-002	I saw it a moment as the flickering leaves parted, noted the white spot on its wing, and it was gone.

Blue-gray Gnatcatcher (Polioptila caerulea)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
4-125	The only nest like the hummingbird’s, and comparable to it in neatness and symmetry, is that of the blue-gray gnatcatcher. This is often saddled upon the limb in the same manner, though it is generally more or less pendent…

Blue-headed Vireo (Vireo solitarius)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
4-114	Moving on into a passage of large stately hemlocks… I paused to make out a note which was entirely new to me… suggested the bleating of a tiny lambkin. Presently the birds appeared, a pair of the solitary vireo.
4-115	They came flitting from point to point, alighting only for a moment at a time, the male silent, but the female uttering this strange, tender note. It was a rendering into some new sylvan dialect of the human sentiment of maidenly love.
4-116	The nest was suspended to the fork of a small branch, as is usual with the vireos, plentifully lined with lichens, and bound and rebound with masses of coarse spiderwebs.
8-041	There are five species found in most of our woods, namely, the red-eyed vireo, the white-eyed vireo, the warbling vireo, the yellow-throated vireo, and the solitary vireo, the red-eyed and warbling being most abundant, and the white-eyed being the most lively and animated songster.
8-046	The basket-like nest, pendent to the low branches in the woods… is, in most cases, the nest of the red-eyed, though the solitary constructs a similar tenement, but in much more remote and secluded localities.
2-087	That sharp, uninterrupted, but still continued warble… is that of the solitary warbling vireo, a bird slightly larger, much rarer, and with a louder, less cheerful and happy strain.
2-088	I see him hopping along lengthwise of the limbs, and note the orange tinge of his breast and sides and the white circle around his eye.
2-130	That sharp, uninterrupted, but still continued warble… is that of the solitary warbling vireo, a bird slightly larger, much rarer, and with a louder, less cheerful and happy strain.

Bobolink (Dolichonyx oryzivorus)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
1-059	Where did the bobolink disport himself before there were meadows in the North and rice fields in the South?
1-070	In the meadows the bobolink is in all his glory
2-008	The song of the bobolink to me expresses hilarity
5-040	You are walking forth in the soft morning air, when suddenly there comes a burst of bobolink melody from some mysterious source. A score of throats pour out one brief, hilarious, tuneful jubilee and are suddenly silent.
5-041	The bobolink does not breed in the District, but usually pauses in his journey and feeds during the day in the grass-lands north of the city.
5-060	In large flocks they search over every inch of ground, and at intervals hover on the wing or alight in the treetops, all pouring forth their gladness at once, and filling the air with a multitudinous musical clamor.
5-061	In September, with numbers greatly increased, they are on their way back. I am first advised of their return by hearing their calls at night as they fly over the city.
7-036	the contrast is greatest, perhaps, in the bobolink family, the female fleeing with all her speed and the male pursuing with equal precipitation
8-073	Again, he says the song of the blue grosbeak resembles the bobolink’s, which it does about as much as the color of the two birds resembles each other; one is black and white and the other is blue.
8-093	The bobolink, also, has both characteristics, and, notwithstanding the difference of form and build, etc., is very suggestive of the English skylark, as it figures in the books, and is, no doubt, fully its equal as a songster.

Brown Creepers (Certhia americana)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
4-062	After the woodpeckers have abandoned their nests… their cousins, the nuthatches, chickadees, and brown creepers, fall heir to them.

Buntings (Emberizidae)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
4-041	But even among birds that neither bore nor mine, but which build a shallow nest on the branch of a tree or upon the ground, as the robin, the finches, the buntings, etc., the ordure of the young is removed to a distance by the parent bird.

Canada Grouse (Falcipennis canadensis)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
3-050	The Canada grouse was also common.
3-051	I shot eight of the latter in less than an hour on one occasion; the eighth one, which was an old male, was killed with smooth pebble stones, my shot having run short.
3-052	The wounded bird ran under a pile of brush, like a frightened hen.

Canada Jay (Perisoreus canadensis)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
8-099	Thoreau relates that in the woods of Maine the Canada jay will sometimes make its meal with the lumbermen, taking the food out of their hands.

Canada Sparrow (Zonotrichia albicollis)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
5-021	This day, for the first time, I heard the song of the Canada sparrow, a soft, sweet note, almost running into a warble.

Canada Warbler (Cardellina canadensis)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
1-098	birds of the deep northern forests, that, like the speckled Canada warbler and the hermit thrush, only the privileged ones hear.
2-064	a small, light slate-colored bird flutters out of the bank… and I see it is the speckled Canada warbler. I find no authority in the books for this bird to build upon the ground, yet here is the nest, made chiefly of dry grass, set in a slight excavation in the bank…
2-065	The speckled Canada is a very superior warbler, having a lively, animated strain… hopping amid the branches with increased liveliness, and indulging in fine sibilant chirps, too happy to keep silent.
2-066	In form he is an elegant bird, somewhat slender, his back of a bluish lead-color… the under part of his body… is of a light, delicate yellow, with a belt of black dots across his breast.
2-120	He has a habit of curtseying when he discovers you which is very pretty.
3-013	By a little trout-brook in a low part of the woods adjoining the clearing, I had a good time pursuing and identifying a number of warblers, the speckled Canada, the black-throated blue, the yellow-rumped, and Audubon’s warbler.

Canada Woodpecker (Dryocopus pileatus)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
3-040	I saw blackbirds at this place, and sparrows, and the solitary sandpiper, and the Canada woodpecker, and a large number of hummingbirds.

Canary (Serinus canaria)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
6-026	If it [the winter wren] would only thrive and sing well when caged, like the canary, how far it would surpass that bird!
6-027	The strain [of the northern water-thrush] was emphatic and quite loud, like the canary’s, but very brief.

Catbird (Dumetella carolinensis)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
1-110	More abundant than all other birds, except the robin and catbird
1-123	the catbird is a coquette and a flirt, as well as a sort of female Paul Pry
1-127	She is the parodist of the woods, and there is ever a mischievous, bantering, half-ironical undertone in her lay
1-128	simple structure of dead twigs and dry grass is the centre of much anxious solicitude.
2-011	the catbird’s, pride
8-008	There was the robin, the blue jay, the bluebird, the yellowbird, the cherry-bird, the catbird, the chipping bird, the woodpecker, the high-hole, an occasional redbird, and a few others, in the woods up along their borders, but whoever dreamed that there were still others that not even the hunters saw, and whose names no one had ever heard.

Cedar Waxwing (Bombycilla cedrorum)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
3-029	By the lake, I met that orchard beauty, the cedar waxwing, spending his vacation in the assumed character of a flycatcher, whose part he performed with great accuracy and deliberation.
3-030	From the tops of the dead trees along the border of the lake, he would sally out in all directions, sweeping through long curves, alternately mounting and descending, now reaching up for a fly high in air, now sinking low for one near the surface, and returning to his perch in a few moments for a fresh start.
5-026	The most mischievous enemies of the cherries, however, here as at the North, are the cedar waxwings, or ‘cherry-birds.’
5-027	In small flocks they circle about, high in air, uttering their fine note, or plunge quickly into the tops of remote trees.
2-094	The silence of the cedar-bird throws a mystery about him which neither his good looks nor his petty larcenies in cherry time can dispel.
4-001	In an open space in the woods I see a pair of cedar-birds collecting moss from the top of a dead tree.
4-002	I soon discover the nest placed in the fork of a small soft maple, which stands amid a thick growth of wild cherry-trees and young beeches.
4-003	Presently I hear the well-known note, and the female sweeps down and settles unsuspectingly into the half-finished structure.
4-004	In a moment the male, with a tuft of wool in his beak (for there is a sheep pasture near), joins her, and the two reconnoitre the premises from the surrounding bushes.
4-005	In less than a week the female has begun to deposit her eggs, four of them in as many days, white tinged with purple, with black spots on the larger end. After two weeks of incubation the young are out.
4-006	Excepting the American goldfinch, this bird builds later in the spring than any other, its nest, in our northern climate, seldom being undertaken till July.
4-008	As with the goldfinch, the reason is, probably, that suitable food for the young cannot be had at an earlier period.
4-015	I knew a pair of cedar-birds, one season, to build in an apple-tree, the branches of which rubbed against the house.
4-016	That most freely used is a sort of cotton-bearing plant which grows in old worn out fields. The nest is large for the size of the bird, and very soft.
8-007	There was the robin, the blue jay, the bluebird, the yellowbird, the cherry-bird, the catbird, the chipping bird, the woodpecker, the high-hole, an occasional redbird, and a few others, in the woods up along their borders, but whoever dreamed that there were still others that not even the hunters saw, and whose names no one had ever heard.

Cerulean Warbler (Setophaga cerulea)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
8-034	…the cerulean warbler, said to be abundant about Niagara…

Chestnut-sided Warbler (Setophaga pensylvanica)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
2-081	He is quite common in these woods, as in all the woods about. He is one of the rarest and handsomest of the warblers; his white breast and throat, chestnut sides, and yellow crown show conspicuously.
2-082	A characteristic attitude of the male during this season is a slight drooping of the wings, and tail a little elevated, which gives him a very smart, bantam-like appearance.
2-126	Last year I found the nest of one in an up lying beech wood, in a low bush near the roadside, where cows passed and browsed daily.

Chewink (Pipilo erythrophthalmus)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
1-124	the chewink shows his inhospitality.

Chickadee (Paridae)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
4-063	The chickadee arranges in the bottom of the cavity a little mat of a light felt-like substance… On this soft lining the female deposits six speckled eggs.
3-027	Indulging in a brief nap on a rug of club-moss carelessly dropped at the foot of a pine-tree, I woke up to find myself the subject of a discussion of a troop of chickadees.
4-061	After the woodpeckers have abandoned their nests… their cousins, the nuthatches, chickadees, and brown creepers, fall heir to them.

Chimney Swallow (Chaetura pelagica)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
4-077	…and a chimney swallow once got tired of soot and smoke, and fastened its nest on a rafter in a hay barn.
5-032	The chimney swallows, or swifts, are not far behind, and remain here, in large numbers, the whole season.

Chipping Sparrow (Spizella passerina)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
8-009	There was the robin, the blue jay, the bluebird, the yellowbird, the cherry-bird, the catbird, the chipping bird, the woodpecker, the high-hole, an occasional redbird, and a few others, in the woods up along their borders, but whoever dreamed that there were still others that not even the hunters saw, and whose names no one had ever heard.
1-050	that familiar little sparrow, the Socialis; yet who that has observed him sitting by the wayside, and repeating, with devout attitude, that fine sliding chant, does not recognize the neglect?
1-132	That little sparrow… It is the Socialis and he finds his subsistence properly in various seeds and the larvae of insects, though he occasionally… seeks to emulate the pewee

Cliff Swallow (Petrochelidon pyrrhonota)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
7-041	the cliff species that now stick their nests under the eaves of the barn.
7-042	I have heard that these swallows, when ejected from their homes in that way by the phoebe-bird, have been known to fall to and mason up the entrance to the nest while their enemy was inside of it
7-053	these swallows, when ejected from their homes in that way by the phoebe-bird, have been known to fall to and mason up the entrance to the nest while their enemy was inside of it
8-100	…in our own country the cliff swallow seems to have entirely abandoned ledges and shelving rocks, as a place to nest, for the eaves and projections of farm and other outbuildings.

Cow Bunting (Molothrus ater)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
2-067	It is a singular freak of nature, this instinct which prompts one bird to lay its eggs in the nests of others, and thus shirk the responsibility of rearing its own young. The cow buntings always resort to this cunning trick…
2-068	The cow bunting seems to have no conscience about the matter, and, so far as I have observed, invariably selects the nest of a bird smaller than itself.
2-069	It suggested the thought that perhaps, when the cowbird finds the full complement of eggs in a nest, it throws out one and deposits its own instead.
2-070	In July the young, which have been reared in the same neighborhood, and which are now of a dull fawn color, begin to collect in small flocks, which grow to be quite large in autumn.
2-117	the parent bird removes their dead bodies, giving its whole energy and care to the foster-child.
2-119	I found a simple nest of dry grass and leaves partially concealed under a prostrate branch. I took it to be the nest of a sparrow. There were three eggs in the nest, and one lying about a foot below it as if it had been rolled out, as of course it had.
1-052	he is quite a polygamist, and usually has two, or three demure little ladies in faded black beside him… Apparently with much labor and effort, they gurgle and blubber up out of him, falling on the ear with a peculiar subtile ring, as of turning water from a glass bottle
4-121	It [red-eyed vireo nest] contained three eggs of the bird’s own, and one of the cow bunting… the young interloper was at least four times as large as either of the others, and with such a superabundance of bowels as to almost smother his bedfellows beneath them.

Cuckoo (Cuculidae)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
1-066	With me, the cuckoo does not arrive till June
1-072	The cuckoo is one of the most solitary birds of our forests, and is strangely tame and quiet, appearing equally untouched by joy or grief, fear or anger.
1-073	His note or call is as of one lost or wandering, and to the farmer is prophetic of rain.
1-078	The plumage of the cuckoo is a rich glossy brown, and is unrivaled in beauty by any other neutral tint with which I am acquainted. It is also remarkable for its firmness and fineness.
1-081	His tail seems disproportionately long… and his flight among the trees is very still, contrasting strongly with the honest clatter of the robin or pigeon.
2-143	In Europe the parallel case is that of the cuckoo, and occasionally our own cuckoo imposes upon a robin or a thrush in the same manner.
4-087	The blue jay now and then lays in an old crow’s nest or cuckoo’s nest.
4-089	I heard of a cuckoo that dispossessed a robin of its nest; of another that set a blue jay adrift.
4-064	Among our own birds, the cuckoos and blue jays build open nests, without presenting any noticeable difference in the coloring of the two sexes.

Dark-eyed Junco (Junco hyemalis)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
1-051	Yet he has a lisping warble very savory to the ear. I have heard him indulge in it even in February.
3-003	The snowbird was very abundant here, as it had been at various points along the route after leaving Lake George.
5-004	the snowbird chattered.
2-015	As I enter the woods the slate-colored snowbird starts up before me and chirps sharply. His protest when thus disturbed is almost metallic in its sharpness.
2-016	He breeds here, and is not esteemed a snowbird at all, as he disappears at the near approach of winter, and returns again in spring, like the song sparrow, and is not in any way associated with the cold and the snow.
2-018	The snowbird, or ‘black chipping-bird,’ as it is known among the farmers, is the finest architect of any of the ground-builders known to me. The site of its nest is usually some low bank by the roadside, near a wood.
2-019	Horse and cow hair are plentifully used, imparting to the interior of the nest great symmetry and firmness as well as softness.
4-103	In a certain locality in the interior of New York, I know, every season, where I am sure to find a nest or two of the slate-colored snowbird. It is under the brink of a low mossy bank, so near the highway that it could be reached from a passing vehicle with a whip.
4-104	She awaits the near approach of the sound of feet or wheels, and then darts quickly across the road, barely clearing the ground, and disappears amid- the bushes on the opposite side.

Downy Woodpecker (Dryobates pubescens)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
1-053	It is Downy beating a reveille to spring. In the utter stillness and amid the rigid forms we listen with pleasure
4-029	A few days since I climbed up to the nest of the downy woodpecker, in the decayed top of a sugar maple.
4-030	For better protection against driving rains, the hole, which was rather more than an inch in diameter, was made immediately beneath a branch which stretched out almost horizontally from the main stem.
4-031	The cavity, which was about fifteen inches deep, was gourd-shaped, and was wrought out with great skill and regularity. The walls were quite smooth and clean and new.

Ducks (Anatidae)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
4-054	The same is true of ducks and other aquatic fowls.
3-046	There were a few wild ducks on both lakes.

Eagles (Accipitridae)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
4-143	One of the rarest of nests is that of the eagle, because the eagle is one of the rarest of birds. Indeed, so seldom is the eagle seen that its presence always seems accidental.
4-151	First, those that repair or appropriate the last year’s nest, as the wren, swallow, bluebird, great-crested flycatcher, owls, eagles, fish hawk, and a few others.

Eastern Bluebird (Sialia sialis)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
1-004	one or two of the more hardy or half-domesticated species, like the song sparrow and the bluebird, usually arriving in March
1-011	And yonder bluebird with the earth tinge on his breast and the sky tinge on his back, did he come down out of heaven on that bright March morning when he told us so softly and plaintively that, if we pleased, spring had come?
1-012	The bird at first seems a mere wandering voice in the air: one hears its call or carol on some bright March morning, but is uncertain of its source or direction; it falls like a drop of rain when no cloud is visible
1-013	Their boldness increases till one sees them hovering with a saucy, inquiring air about barns and outbuildings, peeping into dove-cotes and stable windows, inspecting knotholes and pump-trees, intent only on a place to nest.
1-014	They wage war against robins and wrens, pick quarrels with swallows, and seem to deliberate for days over the policy of taking forcible possession of one of the mud-houses of the latter.
1-018	Schemes of conquest which they at first seemed bent upon are abandoned, and they settle down very quietly in their old quarters in remote stumpy fields.
1-034	the plaintive, homesick note of the bluebird
1-043	the amorous, vivacious warble of the bluebird
2-010	the bluebird’s, love
4-012	Like most of our common species, as the robin, sparrow, bluebird, pewee, wren, etc., this bird sometimes seeks wild, remote localities in which to rear its young; at others, takes up its abode near that of man.
4-148	First, those that repair or appropriate the last year’s nest, as the wren, swallow, bluebird, great-crested flycatcher, owls, eagles, fish hawk, and a few others.
5-002	The bluebird warbled.
7-001	she gave him the color of the one [sky] on his back and the hue of the other [earth] on his breast, and ordained that his appearance in spring should denote that the strife and war between these two elements was at an end.
7-002	He is the peace-harbinger; in him the celestial and terrestrial strike hands and are fast friends. He means the furrow and he means the warmth; he means all the soft, wooing influences of the spring on the one hand, and the retreating footsteps of winter on the other.
7-003	It is sure to be a bright March morning when you first hear his note; and it is as if the milder influences up above had found a voice and let a word fall upon your ear, so tender is it and so prophetic, a hope tinged with a regret.
7-004	‘Bermuda! Bermuda! Bermuda!’ he seems to say, as if both invoking and lamenting
7-005	the little pilgrim may be only repeating the tradition of his race, himself having come only from Florida, the Carolinas, or even from Virginia, where he has found his Bermuda on some broad sunny hillside thickly studded with cedars and persimmon-trees.
7-010	The bluebird enjoys the preeminence of being the first bit of color that cheers our northern landscape.
7-014	the bluebird brings one of the primary hues and the divinest of them all.
7-015	This bird also has the distinction of answering very nearly to the robin redbreast of English memory, and was by the early settlers of New England christened the blue robin.
7-017	Our bird has the softer voice, but the English redbreast is much the more skilled musician.
7-018	the brighter sun and sky of the New World have given him a coat that far surpasses that of his transatlantic cousin.
7-019	On this continent there are at least three species of the common bluebird
7-024	the bluebird is not confined to any one section of the country; and that when one goes West he will still have this favorite with him, though a little changed in voice and color, just enough to give variety without marring the identity.
7-028	The bluebird usually builds its nest in a hole in a stump or stub, or in an old cavity excavated by a woodpecker, when such can be had
7-029	the happy pair make a great show of house-hunting about the farm buildings, now half persuaded to appropriate a dove-cote, then discussing in a lively manner a last year’s swallow’s nest, or proclaiming with much flourish and flutter that they have taken the wren’s house, or the tenement of the purple martin
7-030	they settle back upon the old family stumps and knotholes in remote fields, and go to work in earnest.
7-031	the female is easily captured by approaching very stealthily and covering the entrance to the nest. The bird seldom makes any effort to escape… and keeps her place on the nest till she feels your hand closing around her.
7-032	He warbles and lifts his wings beseechingly, but shows no anger or disposition to scold and complain like most birds. Indeed, this bird seems incapable of uttering a harsh note, or of doing a spiteful, ill-tempered thing.
7-033	About the only enemies the sitting bird or the nest is in danger of are snakes and squirrels.
7-034	There never was a happier or more devoted husband than the male bluebird is.
7-037	while she is sitting he feeds her regularly.
7-038	The male is very active in hunting out a place and exploring the boxes and cavities, but seems to have no choice in the matter and is anxious only to please and encourage his mate
7-039	She brings all the material and does all the work of building, he looking on and encouraging her with gesture and song.
7-040	He acts also as inspector of her work… On coming out he exclaims very plainly, ‘ Excellent! excellent! ‘
7-047	There are no bachelors from choice among the birds; they are all rejected suitors, while old maids are entirely unknown.
7-048	The males, being more exposed by their song and plumage, and by being the pioneers in migrating, seem to be slightly in excess lest the supply fall short
7-050	He hovered about the box, he went in and out, he called, he warbled, he entreated; the female would respond occasionally and come and alight near, and even peep into the nest, but would not enter it
7-051	He would perch above the nest and sound his loudest notes over and over again, looking in the direction of his mate and beckoning with every motion.
7-052	finally he gave it up; the pair disappeared, and the box remained deserted the rest of the summer.
7-054	being no doubt in a bad humor, and the season being well advanced, they made forcible entrance into the adobe tenement of their neighbors
7-055	finally withdrew, rather than live amid such a squeaky, noisy colony.
7-056	If his life is all poetry and romance, hers is all business and prose. She has no pleasure but her duty, and no duty but to look after her nest and brood.
7-057	She shows no affection for the male, no pleasure in his society; she only tolerates him as a necessary evil
7-058	if he is killed, goes in quest of another in the most businesslike manner, as you would go for the plumber or the glazier.
7-059	The male is the attendant of the female, following her wherever she goes. He never leads, never directs, but only seconds and applauds.
7-060	It is a size or two larger, and the ruddy hue of its breast does not verge so nearly on an orange
7-062	Our bird is associated with the spring as the British species cannot be, being a winter resident also
7-063	the brighter sun and sky of the New World have given him a coat that far surpasses that of his transatlantic cousin.
7-064	The bluebird has no art either way, and its nest is easily found.
7-065	The male is the ornamental partner in the firm, and contributes little of the working capital.
7-066	the little pilgrim may be only repeating the tradition of his race, himself having come only from Florida, the Carolinas, or even from Virginia
7-067	found his Bermuda on some broad sunny hillside thickly studded with cedars and persimmon-trees.
7-068	There he lay like a bit of sky fallen upon the grass.
7-070	The males, being more exposed by their song and plumage, and by being the pioneers in migrating, seem to be slightly in excess lest the supply fall short
7-071	sap starts up in the sugar maple the very day the bluebird arrives, and sugar-making begins forthwith.
7-072	they settle back upon the old family stumps and knotholes in remote fields, and go to work in earnest.
7-073	About the only enemies the sitting bird or the nest is in danger of are snakes and squirrels.
7-075	there are sure to be some vacancies in the marital ranks, which they are called on to fill.
7-077	The bluebird, finding her eggs gone and her nest changed, seemed suddenly seized with alarm and shunned the box
7-078	But the happy bridegroom would not take the hint, and exerted all his eloquence to comfort and reassure her.
7-079	He was fresh and fond, and until this bereaved female found him I am sure his suit had not prospered that season.
7-080	he was soon back, uttering the most confident and cheering calls.
8-005	There was the robin, the blue jay, the bluebird, the yellowbird, the cherry-bird, the catbird, the chipping bird, the woodpecker, the high-hole, an occasional redbird, and a few others, in the woods up along their borders, but whoever dreamed that there were still others that not even the hunters saw, and whose names no one had ever heard.
8-096	During the present season, a very severe cold spell the first week in March drove the bluebirds to seek shelter about the houses and outbuildings.
4-069	The same is true of the pewees, the kingbird and the sparrows, while the common bluebird, the oriole, and orchard starling afford examples the other way
7-006	In New York and in New England the sap starts up in the sugar maple the very day the bluebird arrives, and sugar-making begins forthwith.
7-007	The bird is generally a mere disembodied voice; a rumor in the air for two or three days before it takes visible shape before you.
7-008	The males are the pioneers, and come several days in advance of the females.
7-009	By the time both are here and the pair have begun to prospect for a place to nest, sugar-making is over, the last vestige of snow has disappeared, and the plow is brightening its mould-board in the new furrow.

Eastern Meadowlark (Sturnella magna)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
1-044	the long, rich note of the meadowlark
1-064	the long, tender note of the meadowlark comes up from the meadow
5-005	the meadowlark uttered her strong but tender note.
8-091	Note the meadowlark strutting about all day in the meadows.
8-092	The meadowlark occasionally does this in the early part of the season. At such times its long-drawn note or whistle becomes a rich, amorous warble.

Eastern Pewee (Contopus virens)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
1-131	See that sombre, ashen-colored pewee on yonder branch. A true sportsman he, who never takes his game at rest, but always on the wing.
4-132	Let me not forget to mention the nest under the mountain ledge, the nest of the common pewee, a modest mossy structure, with four pearl-white eggs, looking out upon some wild scene and overhung by beetling crags.

Eastern Phoebe (Sayornis phoebe)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
1-033	the phoebe bird, the pioneer of the flycatchers. In the inland farming districts, I used to notice her, on some bright morning about Easter Day, proclaiming her arrival, with much variety of motion and attitude, from the peak of the barn or hay-shed.
1-036	At agreeable intervals in her lay she describes a circle or an ellipse in the air, ostensibly prospecting for insects, but really, I suspect, as an artistic flourish
1-037	surely that ashen gray suit is the superlative of plainness; and that form, likewise, would hardly pass for a perfect figure of a bird.
1-038	Phoebe is seldom seen, except as she darts from her moss-covered nest beneath some bridge or shelving cliff.

English Redbreast (Erithacus rubecula)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
7-016	He has indeed a fine, animated warble, heard nearly the year through about English gardens and along the old hedge-rows, that is quite beyond the compass of our bird’s instrument.
7-061	among British birds there is no blue bird. The cerulean tint seems much rarer among the feathered tribes there than here.

English Skylark (Alauda arvensis)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
8-094	The bobolink, also, has both characteristics, and, notwithstanding the difference of form and build, etc., is very suggestive of the English skylark, as it figures in the books, and is, no doubt, fully its equal as a songster.

European Nightingale (Luscinia megarhynchos)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
8-071	The song of the water-thrush is very brief, compared with the philomel’s, and its quality is brightness and vivacity, while that of the latter bird, if the books are to be credited, is melody and harmony.
8-069	Audubon thinks the song of the Louisiana water-thrush equal to that of the European nightingale…

Ferruginous Thrush (Toxostoma rufum)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
4-141	The other extreme among our common birds is furnished by the ferruginous thrush, which collects together a mass of material that would fill a half-bushel measure…

Field Sparrow (Spizella pusilla)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
1-071	in the high pastures the field sparrow sings his breezy vesper-hymn
1-082	The two white lateral quills in his tail, and his habit of running and skulking a few yards in advance of you as you walk through the fields, are sufficient to identify him. Not in meadows or orchards, but in high, breezy pasture-grounds, will you look for him.
1-083	His song is most noticeable after sundown, when other birds are silent; for which reason he has been aptly called the vesper sparrow.
1-084	His song is not so brisk and varied as that of the song sparrow, being softer and wilder, sweeter and more plaintive.
1-086	The female builds a plain nest in the open field, without so much as a bush or thistle or tuft of grass to protect it or mark its site
1-126	The soft, mellow flute of the veery fills a place in the chorus of the woods that the song of the vesper sparrow fills in the chorus of the fields.

Finches (Fringillidae)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
4-040	But even among birds that neither bore nor mine, but which build a shallow nest on the branch of a tree or upon the ground, as the robin, the finches, the buntings, etc., the ordure of the young is removed to a distance by the parent bird.

Flycatchers (Tyrannidae)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
8-051	The flycatchers always take their insect prey on the wing, by a sudden darting or swooping movement; often a very audible snap of the beak may be heard.
8-052	These birds are the least elegant, both in form and color, of any of our feathered neighbors. They have short legs, a short neck, large heads, and broad, flat beaks, with bristles at the base. They often fly with a peculiar quivering movement of the wings, and when at rest some of the species oscillate their tails at short intervals.

Fox Sparrow (Passerella iliaca)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
1-107	I have met here many of the rarer species, such as… the fox sparrow, etc.
5-019	In some low open woods, saw many sparrows — the fox, white-throated, white-crowned, the Canada, the song, the swamp — all herding together along the warm and sheltered borders.
5-039	In February one may hear, in the Smithsonian grounds, the song of the fox sparrow. It is a strong, richly modulated whistle, the finest sparrow note I have ever heard.
8-063	The fox sparrow, the largest and handsomest species of this family, comes to us in the fall, from the North, where it breeds.

Gnatcatchers (Polioptilidae)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
5-048	In form and manner it seems almost a duplicate of the catbird on a small scale. It mews like a young kitten, erects its tail, flirts, droops its wings… Its song is a lisping, chattering, incoherent warble.
5-073	Its color above is a light gray-blue, gradually fading till it becomes white on the breast and belly. It is a very small bird, and has a long, facile, slender tail.

Golden Eagle (Aquila chrysaetos)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
4-144	The golden eagle is common to the northern parts of both hemispheres, and places its eyrie on high precipitous rocks.

Golden-crowned Kinglet (Regulus satrapa)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
5-018	A golden-crowned kinglet was there also, a little tuft of gray feathers, hopping about as restless as a spirit.

Goosander (Mergus merganser)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
3-047	A brood of the goosander or red merganser, the young not yet able to fly, were the occasion of some spirited rowing.
3-048	But with two pairs of oars in a trim light skiff, it was impossible to come up with them.

Gray-cheeked Thrush (Catharus minimus)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
2-093	I have met the gray-cheeked thrush in the woods, and held him in my hand; still I do not know him.
8-017	Before I had passed this hidden stretch of water, a pair of those mysterious thrushes, the gray-cheeked, flew up from the ground and perched on a low branch.
8-075	Its peculiarities were its broad, square tail; the length of its legs, which were three and three quarters inches from the end of the middle toe to the hip-joint; and the deep uniform olive-brown of the upper parts, and the gray of the lower.
8-076	But little seems to be known concerning it, except that it breeds in the far north, even on the shores of the Arctic Ocean.
8-077	In size this bird approaches the wood thrush, being larger than either the hermit or the veery; unlike all other species, no part of its plumage has a tawny or yellowish tinge.

Gray-crested Titmouse (Baeolophus bicolor)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
1-041	the clear, sweet whistle of the gray-crested titmouse

Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodias)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
3-022	As we were eagerly waiting some movement to confirm this impression, it lifted up its head, and, lo! a great blue heron.
3-023	Seeing us approach, it spread its long wings and flew solemnly across to a dead tree on the other side of the lake, enhancing rather than relieving the loneliness and desolation that brooded over the scene.
3-024	As we proceeded it flew from tree to tree in advance of us, apparently loth to be disturbed in its ancient and solitary domain.

Great-crested Flycatcher (Myiarchus crinitus)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
8-053	…the great crested flycatcher (distinguished from all others by the bright ferruginous color of its tail), and the small green-crested flycatcher.
2-140	From the great-crested to the little green flycatcher, their ways and general habits are the same.
4-138	The nest of the great-crested flycatcher is seldom free from snake skins, three or four being sometimes woven into it.
4-149	First, those that repair or appropriate the last year’s nest, as the wren, swallow, bluebird, great-crested flycatcher, owls, eagles, fish hawk, and a few others.

Green-crested Pewee (Empidonax virescens)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
4-136	The green-crested pewee builds its nest in many instances wholly of the blossoms of the white oak.

Hawks (Accipitridae)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
3-043	Blue jays, two or three small hawks, a solitary wild pigeon, and ruffed grouse were seen along the route.
4-024	Though the nest is not especially an artistic work, requiring strength rather than skill, yet the eggs and the young of few other birds are so completely housed from the elements, or protected from their natural enemies, the jays, crows, hawks, and owls.
4-046	Other exceptions are the pigeons, hawks, and water-fowls.

Hermit Thrush (Catharus guttatus)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
1-099	birds of the deep northern forests, that, like the speckled Canada warbler and the hermit thrush, only the privileged ones hear.
1-113	If we take the quality of melody as the test, the wood thrush, hermit thrush, and the veery thrush stand at the head of our list of songsters.
1-116	It is quite a rare bird, of very shy and secluded habits… people in the Adirondack region call it the Swamp Angel.
1-117	the song of the hermit is in a higher key, and is more wild and ethereal.
2-013	that of the hermit thrush, spiritual serenity
2-028	in the hermit, the spots run more into lines, on a ground of a faint bluish white
2-032	a strain has reached my ears from out the depths of the forest that to me is the finest sound in nature, the song of the hermit thrush. I often hear him thus a long way off, sometimes over a quarter of a mile away… rising pure and serene, as if a spirit from some remote height were slowly chanting a divine accompaniment.
2-033	‘spheral, spheral!’ he seems to say; ‘O holy, holy! Clear away, clear away! Clear up, clear up!’ interspersed with the finest trills and the most delicate preludes.
2-034	I have seldom known two of these birds to be singing at the same time in the same locality, rivaling each other, like the wood thrush or the veery.
2-035	The hermit thrush may be easily identified by his color; his back being a clear olive-brown becoming rufous on his rump and tail.
2-107	through the general chorus of wrens and warblers I detect this sound rising pure and serene, as if a spirit from some remote height were slowly chanting a divine accompaniment.
2-108	This song appeals to the sentiment of the beautiful in me, and suggests a serene religious beatitude as no other sound in nature does.
2-109	It is not a proud, gorgeous strain, like the tanager’s or the grosbeak’s; suggests no passion or emotion, nothing personal, but seems to be the voice of that calm, sweet solemnity one attains to in his best moments.
2-131	And as the hermit’s evening hymn goes up from the deep solitude below me, I experience that serene exaltation of sentiment of which music, literature, and religion are but the faint types and symbols.
3-032	Here also I met my beautiful singer, the hermit thrush, but with no song in his throat now.
3-033	A week or two later and he was on his journey southward.
3-034	This was the only species of thrush I saw in the Adirondacks.
3-035	Near Lake Sandford, where were large tracts of raspberry and wild cherry, I saw numbers of them.
3-036	A boy whom we met, driving home some stray cows, said it was the ‘partridge-bird,’ no doubt from the resemblance of its note, when disturbed, to the cluck of the partridge.
6-019	the hermit thrush and the veery, or Wilson’s thrush, were common [in the higher lands of the Catskills].
6-048	I had stated in print on two occasions that the wood thrush was not found in the higher lands of the Catskills, but that the hermit thrush and the veery, or Wilson’s thrush, were common.
8-057	The wood thrush and the hermit stand at the head as songsters, no two persons, perhaps, agreeing as to which is the superior.

Herons (Ardeidae)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
4-093	Large, loose structures, like the nests of the osprey and certain of the herons, have been found with half a dozen nests of the blackbird set in the outer edges…

Hooded Warbler (Setophaga citrina)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
1-103	In only one locality, full of azalea and swamp-huckleberry, I am always sure of finding the hooded warbler.
8-023	Throughout the Middle and Eastern States, half a dozen species or so may be found in almost every locality, as the redstart, the Maryland yellow-throat, the yellow warbler… the hooded warbler, the black and white creeping warbler…

House Sparrow (Passer domesticus)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
4-079	I have known the social sparrow, or ‘hairbird,’ to build under a shed, in a tuft of hay that hung down, through the loose flooring, from the mow above.
4-080	It usually contents itself with half a dozen stalks of dry grass and a few long hairs from a cow’s tail loosely arranged on the branch of an apple-tree.
8-064	The social sparrow, alias hair bird, alias redheaded chipping bird, is the smallest of the sparrows, and, I believe, the only one that builds in trees.
4-043	One may observe the social sparrow, when feeding its young, pause a moment after the worm has been given and hop around on the brink of the nest observing the movements within.

House Wren (Troglodytes aedon)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
4-083	The house wren will build in anything that has an accessible cavity, from an old boot to a bombshell.
4-084	This jealous little wretch has the wise forethought, when the box in which he builds contains two compartments, to fill up one of them, so as to avoid the risk of troublesome neighbors.
7-043	no other bird that so throbs and palpitates with music as this little vagabond.
7-044	the male had a small tornado of song in his crop that kept him ‘ruffled’ every moment in the day.
7-045	Instead of that voluble and gushing song outside the window, I heard the wrens scolding and crying at a fearful rate
7-046	the wren is saucy, and he has a tongue in his head that can out wag any other tongue known to me.
7-049	Rushing into the nest, they hustled those eggs out in less than a minute, wren time.
7-069	They did not scold as before, but after a day or two withdrew from the garden, dumb with grief, and gave up the struggle.
7-076	If the male was before ‘ruffled with whirlwind of his ecstasies,’ he was now in danger of being rent asunder. He inflated his throat and caroled as wren never caroled before.

Hummingbirds (Trochilidae)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
1-027	yonder hummingbird’s nest, which is a marvel of fitness and adaptation, a proper setting for this winged gem—the body of it composed of a white, felt-like substance, probably the down of some plant or the wool of some worm, and toned down in keeping with the branch on which it sits by minute tree lichens, woven together by threads as fine and frail as gossamer.
4-122	The woods hold not such another gem as the nest of the hummingbird. The finding of one is an event to date from. It is the next best thing to finding an eagle’s nest.
4-124	The hummingbird, unlike all others, does not alight upon the nest, but flies into it. She enters it as quick as a flash, but as light as any feather.
4-126	The only nest like the hummingbird’s, and comparable to it in neatness and symmetry, is that of the blue-gray gnatcatcher.
3-041	Indeed, I saw more of the latter here than I ever before saw in any one locality. Their squeaking and whirring were almost incessant.

Indigo Bunting (Passerina cyanea)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
1-091	a little hard and shrill, like that of the indigo-bird or oriole
4-098	I observe a male indigo-bird sitting on precisely the same part of a high branch, and singing in his most vivacious style.
4-099	In a low bush near by, I come upon the object of his solicitude, a thick, compact nest composed largely of dry leaves and fine grass…
4-108	The song of this bird [blue grosbeak] is a rapid, intricate warble, like that of the indigo-bird, though stronger and louder.
4-110	Indeed, these two birds so much resemble each other in color, form, manner, voice, and general habits that, were it not for the difference in size — the grosbeak being nearly as large again as the indigo-bird — it would be a hard matter to tell them apart.
7-021	the indigo-bird, the latter so intensely blue as to fully justify its name.

Jays (Corvidae)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
4-022	Though the nest is not especially an artistic work, requiring strength rather than skill, yet the eggs and the young of few other birds are so completely housed from the elements, or protected from their natural enemies, the jays, crows, hawks, and owls.

Kentucky Warbler (Geothlypis formosa)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
5-045	Of these the Kentucky warbler is by far the most interesting, though quite rare.
5-046	I hear at intervals a clear, strong, bell-like whistle or warble, and presently catch a glimpse of the bird as he jumps up from the ground to take an insect or worm from the under side of a leaf. This is his characteristic movement.
5-047	His back is clear olive-green, his throat and breast bright yellow. A still more prominent feature is a black streak on the side of the face, extending down the neck.
5-068	He belongs to the class of ground warblers, and his range is very low, indeed lower than that of any other species with which I am acquainted.
5-069	Draw a line three feet from the ground, and you mark the usual limit of the Kentucky warbler’s quest for food.
8-026	The subdivision of ground warblers, the most common members of which are the Maryland yellow-throat, the Kentucky warbler, and the mourning ground warbler, are usually found in low, wet, bushy, or half-open woods, often on and always near the ground.

Kingbirds (Tyrannus)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
8-048	The kingbird, or tyrant flycatcher, might serve as the type of the order.
1-029	the kingbird’s, whose harsh jingle, compared with Robin’s evening melody, is as the clatter of pots and kettles beside the tone of a flute.
1-068	often the goldfinch, the kingbird, the scarlet tanager delay their coming till then
2-037	The kingbird is the best dressed member of the family, but he is a braggart; and, though always snubbing his neighbors, is an arrant coward, and shows the white feather at the slightest display of pluck in his antagonist.
4-067	The same is true of the pewees, the kingbird and the sparrows, while the common bluebird, the oriole, and orchard starling afford examples the other way
4-135	The kingbird builds a nest altogether admirable, using various soft cotton and woolen substances, and sparing neither time nor material to make it substantial and warm.
6-013	I have heard… the note of the kingbird; [at night]
4-038	With woodpeckers and kindred species, and with birds Chat [that] burrow in the ground, as bank swallows, kingfishers, etc., it is a necessity. The accumulation of the excrement in the nest would prove most fatal to the young.

Little Green Flycatchers (Empidonax virescens)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
2-141	From the great-crested to the little green flycatcher, their ways and general habits are the same.

Louisiana Water-thrush (Parkesia motacilla)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
5-049	The present species, though not abundant, is frequently met with along Rock Creek. It is a very quick, vivacious bird, and belongs to the class of ecstatic singers.
5-050	Its song is a sudden burst, beginning with three or four clear round notes much resembling certain tones of the clarinet, and terminating in a rapid, intricate warble.
5-074	This bird resembles a thrush only in its color, which is olive-brown above and grayish white beneath, with speckled throat and breast. Its habits, manners, and voice suggest those of the lark.
6-034	The large-billed water-thrush is much the superior songster, but the present species has a very bright and cheerful strain.
8-068	Audubon thinks the song of the Louisiana water-thrush equal to that of the European nightingale…
8-070	The song of the water-thrush is very brief, compared with the philomel’s, and its quality is brightness and vivacity, while that of the latter bird, if the books are to be credited, is melody and harmony.
8-081	The other specimen was the northern or small water-thrush, cousin-german to the oven – bird and half brother to the Louisiana water-thrush or wagtail.

Maryland Yellow-throat (Geothlypis trichas)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
2-071	the Maryland yellow-throat peeps shyly from the lower bushes and utters his ‘Fip! fip!’ in sympathy;
8-021	Throughout the Middle and Eastern States, half a dozen species or so may be found in almost every locality, as the redstart, the Maryland yellow-throat, the yellow warbler… the hooded warbler, the black and white creeping warbler…
8-025	The subdivision of ground warblers, the most common members of which are the Maryland yellow-throat, the Kentucky warbler, and the mourning ground warbler, are usually found in low, wet, bushy, or half-open woods, often on and always near the ground.

Mockingbird (Mimus polyglottos)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
1-115	The mockingbird undoubtedly possesses the greatest range of mere talent… but being mostly an imitator, he never approaches the serene beauty and sublimity of the hermit thrush.

Mourning Ground Warbler (Geothlypis philadelphia)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
2-078	Lead-colored head and neck, becoming nearly black on the breast; clear olive-green back, and yellow belly. … I know him to be a ground warbler; from his dark breast the ornithologist has added the expletive mourning, hence the mourning ground warbler.
2-079	Of this bird both Wilson and Audubon confessed their comparative ignorance, neither ever having seen its nest or become acquainted with its haunts and general habits.
2-125	Its song is quite striking and novel, though its voice at once suggests the class of warblers to which it belongs. It is very shy and wary, flying but a few feet at a time, and studiously concealing itself from your view.
4-117	When I saw it was the female mourning ground warbler, and remembered that the nest of this bird had not yet been seen by any naturalist, that not even Dr. Brewer had ever seen the eggs, I felt that here was something worth looking for.
4-118	It was placed but a few feet from the maple-tree, in a bunch of ferns, and about six inches from the ground. It was quite a massive nest, composed entirely of the stalks and leaves of dry grass, with an inner lining of fine, dark brown roots.
8-027	The subdivision of ground warblers, the most common members of which are the Maryland yellow-throat, the Kentucky warbler, and the mourning ground warbler, are usually found in low, wet, bushy, or half-open woods, often on and always near the ground.
8-035	…and the mourning ground warbler, which I have found breeding about the head-waters of the Delaware, in New York.

Northern Cardinal (Cardinalis cardinalis)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
5-053	The cardinal grosbeak, or Virginia redbird, is quite common in the same localities, though more inclined to seek the woods.
5-054	there is something of the tone of the fife in his song or whistle, while his ordinary note, when disturbed, is like the clink of a sabre.
5-078	The female is tinged with brown, and shows but little red except when she takes flight.
8-012	There was the robin, the blue jay, the bluebird, the yellowbird, the cherry-bird, the catbird, the chipping bird, the woodpecker, the high-hole, an occasional redbird, and a few others, in the woods up along their borders, but whoever dreamed that there were still others that not even the hunters saw, and whose names no one had ever heard.

Northern Flicker (Colaptes auratus)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
1-039	Another April comer, who arrives shortly after Robin-redbreast… is the gold-winged woodpecker, alias high-hole, alias flicker, alias yarup…. He announces his arrival by a long, loud call, repeated from the dry branch of some tree, or a stake in the fence, a thoroughly melodious April sound.
1-040	It is a loud, strong, sonorous call, and does not seem to imply an answer, but rather to subserve some purpose of love or music. It is Yarup’s proclamation of peace and goodwill to all.
1-054	I recall an ancient maple standing sentry to a large sugar-bush, that, year after year, afforded protection to a brood of yellow-hammers in its decayed heart.
1-055	three or four of these birds might be seen… a sort of wild, rollicking laughter, intermingled with various cries, yelps, and squeals, as if some incident had excited their mirth and ridicule.
1-056	the golden-wing prefers the fields and the borders of the forest to the deeper seclusion of the woods, and hence… obtains most of his subsistence from the ground, probing it for ants and crickets.
8-086	…and the redshafted woodpecker is our golden-wing, or high-hole, colored red instead of yellow.
5-007	As I pass along, the high-hole calls in the distance precisely as I have heard him in the North.
8-011	There was the robin, the blue jay, the bluebird, the yellowbird, the cherry-bird, the catbird, the chipping bird, the woodpecker, the high-hole, an occasional redbird, and a few others, in the woods up along their borders, but whoever dreamed that there were still others that not even the hunters saw, and whose names no one had ever heard.

Northern Parula (Setophaga americana)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
2-031	So tiny and elegant, the smallest of the warblers; a delicate blue back, with a slight bronze-colored triangular spot between the shoulders; upper mandible black; lower mandible yellow as gold; throat yellow, becoming a dark bronze on the breast.
2-105	In the upland woods of beech and maple it is a more familiar sound than in these solitudes.
2-106	It is never without surprise that I find amid these rugged, savage aspects of nature creatures so fairy and delicate.

Northern Water-thrush (Parkesia noveboracensis)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
6-028	a bright, lively song, or warble, that issued from the branches overhead, and that was entirely new to me, though there was something in the tone of it that told me the bird was related to the wood-wagtail and to the water-wagtail or thrush.
6-029	The strain was emphatic and quite loud, like the canary’s, but very brief.
6-030	It proved to be the small, or northern, water-thrush (called also the New York water-thrush), a new bird to me.
6-031	In size it was noticeably smaller than the large, or Louisiana, water-thrush, as described by Audubon, but in other respects its general appearance was the same.
6-032	This bird was unknown to the older ornithologists, and is but poorly described by the new. It builds a mossy nest on the ground, or under the edge of a decayed log.
6-033	the present species has a very bright and cheerful strain. The specimen I saw, contrary to the habits of the family, kept in the treetops like a warbler, and seemed to be engaged in catching insects.
6-035	A correspondent writes me that he has found it breeding on the mountains in Pennsylvania.
8-079	The other specimen was the northern or small water-thrush, cousin-german to the oven – bird and half brother to the Louisiana water-thrush or wagtail.
8-082	It has a strong, clear warble, which at once suggests the song of its congener.

Nuthatch (Sitta)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
1-042	the soft, nasal piping of the nuthatch
3-020	…and the faint piping call of the nuthatches, leading their young through the high trees, was often heard.
4-060	After the woodpeckers have abandoned their nests… their cousins, the nuthatches, chickadees, and brown creepers, fall heir to them.

Orchard Starling (Icterus spurius)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
1-023	those rare, exotic visitants, as the orchard starling or rose-breasted grosbeak, with their distant, high-bred ways.
1-030	I love his note and ways better even than those of the orchard starling or the Baltimore oriole; yet his nest, compared with theirs, is a half-subterranean hut contrasted with a Roman villa.
4-071	The same is true of the pewees, the kingbird and the sparrows, while the common bluebird, the oriole, and orchard starling afford examples the other way
5-038	The kingbird and orchard starling remain the whole season, and breed in the treetops. The rich, copious song of the starling may be heard there all the forenoon.

Oriole (Icterus)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
1-062	May is the month of the swallows and the orioles… The bright plumage of the latter seems really like an arrival from the tropics. I see them dash through the blossoming trees, and all the forenoon hear their incessant warbling and wooing.
1-092	a little hard and shrill, like that of the indigo-bird or oriole
4-070	The same is true of the pewees, the kingbird and the sparrows, while the common bluebird, the oriole, and orchard starling afford examples the other way

Osprey (Pandion haliaetus)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
4-050	Audubon or Wilson, I forget which, tells of a pair of fish hawks, or ospreys, that built their nest in an ancient oak.
4-051	The male was so zealous in the defense of the young that it actually attacked with beak and claw a person who attempted to climb into his nest…
4-092	Large, loose structures, like the nests of the osprey and certain of the herons, have been found with half a dozen nests of the blackbird set in the outer edges…
4-142	…or by the fish hawk, which adds to and repairs its nest year after year, till the whole would make a cart-load.
4-152	First, those that repair or appropriate the last year’s nest, as the wren, swallow, bluebird, great-crested flycatcher, owls, eagles, fish hawk, and a few others.

Ovenbird (Seiurus aurocapilla)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
8-095	…few observers of the birds can have failed to notice its easy, gliding walk. Its other lark trait, namely, singing in the air… I hear it very frequently after sundown, when the ecstatic singer can hardly be distinguished against the sky.
8-080	The other specimen was the northern or small water-thrush, cousin-german to the oven – bird and half brother to the Louisiana water-thrush or wagtail.
2-112	I think this is preeminently his love song, as I hear it oftenest about the mating season.
2-041	Coming to a drier and less mossy place in the woods, I am amused with the golden-crowned thrush, which, however, is no thrush at all, but a warbler.
2-042	He walks on the ground ahead of me with such an easy gliding motion, and with such an unconscious, preoccupied air, jerking his head like a hen or a partridge, now hurrying, now slackening his pace, that I pause to observe him.
2-044	Satisfied that I have no hostile intentions, the pretty pedestrian mounts a limb a few feet from the ground, and gives me the benefit of one of his musical performances, a sort of accelerating chant.
2-045	Commencing in a very low key, which makes him seem at a very uncertain distance, he grows louder and louder till his body quakes and his chant runs into a shriek, ringing in my ear with a peculiar sharpness.
2-046	This lay may be represented thus: ‘Teacher, teacher, teacher, TEACHER, TEACHER!’ The accent on the first syllable and each word uttered with increased force and shrillness.
2-047	Mounting by easy flights to the top of the tallest tree, he 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, rivaling the goldfinch’s in vivacity, and the linnet’s in melody.
2-048	I think this is preeminently his love song, as I hear it oftenest about the mating season.
6-011	Late in the night I woke up, just in time to hear a golden-crowned thrush sing in a tree near by. It sang as loud and cheerily as at midday, and I thought myself after all, quite in luck.

Owl (Strigiformes)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
1-048	I credit the owl’s with a desire to fill the night with music.
3-026	…or an owl hoot off in the mountains, giving to the silence and loneliness a tongue.
6-040	The blue jays found an owl or some wild animal a short distance above me, and, as is their custom on such occasions, proclaimed it at the top of their voices, and kept on till the darkness began to gather in the woods.
4-025	Though the nest is not especially an artistic work, requiring strength rather than skill, yet the eggs and the young of few other birds are so completely housed from the elements, or protected from their natural enemies, the jays, crows, hawks, and owls.
4-150	First, those that repair or appropriate the last year’s nest, as the wren, swallow, bluebird, great-crested flycatcher, owls, eagles, fish hawk, and a few others.

Passenger Pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
1-080	the black-billed species has certain peculiarities that remind one of the passenger pigeon.
4-140	The nest of the passenger pigeon is equally hasty and insufficient, and the squabs often fall to the ground and perish.

Pewees (Contopus)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
3-002	Thoreau made three excursions into the Maine woods, and, though he started the moose and caribou, had nothing more novel to report by way of bird notes than the songs of the wood thrush and the pewee.
4-013	Like most of our common species, as the robin, sparrow, bluebird, pewee, wren, etc., this bird sometimes seeks wild, remote localities in which to rear its young; at others, takes up its abode near that of man.
2-110	They are the least attractive or elegant birds of our fields or forest. Sharp-shouldered, big-headed, short-legged, of no particular color, of little elegance in flight or movement… no birds are so little calculated to excite pleasurable emotions in the beholder, or to become objects of human interest and affection.
2-111	They do not scour the limbs and trees like the warblers, but, perched upon the middle branches, wait, like true hunters, for the game to come along. There is often a very audible snap of the beak as they seize their prey.
4-066	The same is true of the pewees, the kingbird and the sparrows, while the common bluebird, the oriole, and orchard starling afford examples the other way

Phoebes (Sayornis)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
4-133	Always the freshness and coolness, and always the delicate mossy nest of the phoebe bird! The bird keeps her place till you are within a few feet of her, when she flits to a near branch, and, with many oscillations of her tail, observes you anxiously.
4-134	The foundation is of mud with a superstructure of moss, elaborately lined with hair and feathers… Nothing can be more perfect and exquisite than the interior of one of these nests, yet a new one is built every season.
2-038	Its relative, the phoebe-bird, builds an exquisite nest of moss on the side of some shelving cliff or overhanging rock.
7-013	The other birds that arrive about the same time — the sparrow, the robin, the phoebe-bird — are clad in neutral tints, gray, brown, or russet
8-050	The phoebe-bird is the pioneer of the flycatchers, and comes in April, sometimes in March. It comes familiarly about the house and outbuildings, and usually builds beneath hay-sheds or under bridges.

Pigeon (Columbidae)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
3-044	Blue jays, two or three small hawks, a solitary wild pigeon, and ruffed grouse were seen along the route.
3-053	Wild pigeons were quite numerous also.
4-045	Other exceptions are the pigeons, hawks, and water-fowls.
6-001	Wild pigeons, in immense numbers, used to breed regularly in the valley of the Big Ingin and about the head of the Neversink.
6-002	The treetops for miles were full of their nests, while the going and coming of the old birds kept up a constant din.
6-003	But the gunners soon got wind of it, and from far and near were wont to pour in during the spring, and to slaughter both old and young. This practice soon had the effect of driving the pigeons all away, and now only a few pairs breed in these woods.

Pigeon Hawk (Falco columbarius)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
1-133	pigeon hawk’s pursuit of the sparrow or the goldfinch. It is a race of surprising speed and agility.
3-019	A pigeon hawk came prowling by our camp…

Pine Finch (Spinus tristis)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
3-007	During the day I observed several pine finches, a dark brown or brindlish bird, allied to the common yellowbird, which it much resembles in its manner and habits.
3-008	They lingered familiarly about the house, sometimes alighting in a small tree within a few feet of it.
3-031	The pine finch was also here, though, as usual, never appearing at home, but with a waiting, expectant air.

Purple Finch (Haemorhous purpureus)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
2-059	One of the leading songsters in this choir of the old Barkpeeling is the purple finch or linnet. … He is one of our finest songsters, and stands at the head of the finches, as the hermit at the head of the thrushes.
2-060	His song approaches an ecstasy, and, with the exception of the winter wren’s, is the most rapid and copious strain to be heard in these woods.
2-061	throughout, the variety is so great and the strain so rapid that the impression is as of two or three birds singing at the same time.
2-062	He is not common here, and I only find him in these or similar woods. His color is peculiar, and looks as if it might have been imparted by dipping a brown bird in diluted pokeberry juice.
2-063	The female is the color of the song sparrow, a little larger, with heavier beak, and tail much more forked.
2-116	It is quite destitute of the trills and the liquid, silvery, bubbling notes that characterize the wren’s; but there runs through it a round, richly modulated whistle, very sweet and very pleasing.
3-004	As I went out to the spring in the morning to wash myself a purple finch flew up before me, having already performed its ablutions.
3-005	I had first observed this bird the winter before in the Highlands of the Hudson, where, during several clear but cold February mornings, a troop of them sang most charmingly in a tree in front of my house.
3-006	The meeting with the bird here in its breeding haunts was a pleasant surprise.
5-057	The purple finch was there likewise, and the Carolina wren and brown creeper.
8-065	The purple finch heads the list in varied musical ability.

Purple Martin (Progne subis)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
5-033	The purple martins appear in April, as they pass north, and again in July and August on their return, accompanied by their young.

Quails (Odontophoridae)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
1-045	the whistle of the quail
5-059	I was once startled, while living in a country village, to behold, on entering my room at noon, one October day, a quail sitting upon my bed.

Red-eyed Vireo (Vireo olivaceus)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
2-001	I hear all along the line of the forest the incessant warble of the red-eyed vireo, cheerful and happy as the merry whistle of a schoolboy.
2-002	He is one of our most common and widely distributed birds. Approach any forest at any hour of the day, in any kind of weather, from May to August, in any of the Middle or Eastern districts, and the chances are that the first note you hear will be his.
2-003	In the deep wilds of the Adirondacks, where few birds are seen and fewer heard, his note was almost constantly in my ear.
2-004	The red-eye is a larger, slimmer bird, with a faint bluish crown, and a light line over the eye.
2-005	You may see him hopping among the limbs, exploring the under side of the leaves, peering to the right and left, now flitting a few feet, now hopping as many, and warbling incessantly, occasionally in a subdued tone, which sounds from a very indefinite distance.
2-006	When he has found a worm to his liking, he turns lengthwise of the limb and bruises its head with his beak before devouring it.
2-095	Always busy, making it a point never to suspend for one moment his occupation to indulge his musical taste, his lay is that of industry and contentment.
2-096	There is nothing plaintive or especially musical in his performance, but the sentiment expressed is eminently that of cheerfulness.
2-097	The red-eye… is much more of a worm-eater, and has few of the traits or habits of the Muscicapa or the true Sylvia.
4-120	As I was about leaving the woods my hat almost brushed the nest of the red-eyed vireo, which hung basket-like on the end of a low, drooping branch of the beech.
8-036	The red-eyed vireo, whose sweet soliloquy is one of the most constant and cheerful sounds in our woods and groves, is perhaps the most noticeable and abundant species.
8-037	There are five species found in most of our woods, namely, the red-eyed vireo, the white-eyed vireo, the warbling vireo, the yellow-throated vireo, and the solitary vireo, the red-eyed and warbling being most abundant, and the white-eyed being the most lively and animated songster.
8-044	The iris of this bird is white, as that of the red-eyed is red, though in neither case can this mark be distinguished at more than two or three yards.
8-045	The basket-like nest, pendent to the low branches in the woods… is, in most cases, the nest of the red-eyed, though the solitary constructs a similar tenement, but in much more remote and secluded localities.
8-047	Most birds exhibit great alarm and distress, usually with a strong dash of anger, when you approach their nests; but the demeanor of the red-eyed, on such an occasion, is an exception to this rule. The parent birds move about softly amid the branches above, eying the intruder with a curious, innocent look, uttering, now and then, a subdued note or plaint, solicitous and watchful, but making no demonstration of anger or distress.

Red-headed Woodpecker (Melanerpes erythrocephalus)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
4-017	I suspected the builder to be a redheaded woodpecker in the top of a dead oak stub near by.
4-018	I perceived a round hole, about the size of that made by an inch-and-a-half auger, near the top of the decayed trunk, and the white chips of the workman strewing the ground beneath.
4-019	Instantly the hammering ceased, and a scarlet head appeared at the door.
5-055	By far the most abundant species of woodpecker about Washington is the red-headed. It is more common than the robin.
5-056	His deliberate, dignified ways, and his bright uniform of red, white, and steel-blue, bespeak him an officer of rank.

Red-tailed Hawk (Buteo jamaicensis)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
4-072	Standing there, I looked down upon the back of the red-tailed hawk as he flew out over the earth beneath me.
4-119	In the top of a tall tree, a short distance farther on, I saw the nest of the red-tailed hawk, a large mass of twigs and dry sticks.
1-134	The hen-hawk is the most noticeable. He likes the haze and calm of these long, warm days. He is a bird of leisure, and seems always at his ease.
1-135	His flight is a perfect picture of repose in motion.
8-097	I killed a red-shouldered hawk one December, and on removing the skin found the body completely encased in a coating of fat one quarter of an inch in thickness.

Redshafted Woodpecker (Colaptes auratus cafer)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
8-085	…and the redshafted woodpecker is our golden-wing, or high-hole, colored red instead of yellow.

Roosters (Gallus gallus domesticus)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
1-049	I find corroborative evidence of this even in the crowing of the cock.

Rose-breasted Grosbeak (Pheucticus ludovicianus)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
1-024	those rare, exotic visitants, as the orchard starling or rose-breasted grosbeak, with their distant, high-bred ways.
2-051	That richly modulated warble proceeding from the top of yonder birch, and which unpracticed ears would mistake for the voice of the scarlet tanager, comes from that rare visitant, the rose-breasted grosbeak. It is a strong, vivacious strain, a bright noonday song, full of health and assurance, indicating fine talents in the performer, but not genius.
2-052	This bird is said to be quite common in the Northwest, but he is rare in the Eastern districts.
2-053	His beak is disproportionately large and heavy, like a huge nose, which slightly mars his good looks; but Nature has made it up to him in a blush rose upon his breast, and the most delicate of pink linings to the under side of his wings.
2-113	As I come up under the tree he casts his eye down at me, but continues his song.

Rough-winged Swallow (Stelgidopteryx serripennis)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
4-081	The rough-winged swallow builds in the wall and in old stone-heaps…

Ruby-crowned Kinglet (Corthylio calendula)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
5-036	heard for the first time the song of the ruby-crowned wren, or kinglet, the same liquid bubble and cadence which characterize the wren-songs generally, but much finer and more delicate… rising into a full, sustained warble.
8-067	…from my own observation I believe the ruby-crowned kinglet quite capable of such a performance.

Ruby-throated Hummingbird (Archilochus colubris)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
2-050	The female takes shelter amid the branches, and squeaks exultingly as the male, circling above, dives down as if to dislodge her.
4-123	At intervals of two or three minutes she would appear with a small tuft of some cottony substance in her beak, dart a few times through and around the tree, and alighting quickly in the nest, arrange the material she had brought, using her breast as a model.

Ruffed Grouse (Bonasa umbellus)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
2-072	Whir! whir! whir! and a brood of half-grown partridges start up like an explosion… At what an early age the partridge flies!
2-073	The partridge is one of our most native and characteristic birds. … and then he is such a splendid success, so hardy and vigorous.
2-074	If the snow falls very fast, and promises a heavy storm, he will complacently sit down and allow himself to be snowed under.
2-075	His drum is one of the most welcome and beautiful sounds of spring. … He selects… a decayed and crumbling [log]… seeming to give the preference to old oak-logs that are partly blended with the soil.
2-076	He does not hug the log, but stands very erect, expands his ruff, gives two introductory blows, pauses half a second, and then resumes, striking faster and faster till the sound becomes a continuous, unbroken whir, the whole lasting less than half a minute.
2-121	Let me sit down here behind the screen of ferns and briers, and hear this wild hen of the woods call together her brood.
2-122	Approaching him at such times, he suddenly bursts out of the snow at your feet, scattering the flakes in all directions, and goes humming away through the woods like a bomb-shell, a picture of native spirit and success.
2-123	The tips of his wings barely brush the log, so that the sound is produced rather by the force of the blows upon the air and upon his own body as in flying.
2-124	It is difficult to approach him by stealth; you will try many times before succeeding; but seem to pass by him in a great hurry, making all the noise possible, and with plumage furled he stands as immovable as a knot…
1-046	the drumming of the partridge
1-063	the partridge drums in the fresh sprouting woods
1-087	she, too, nests in open, unprotected places, avoiding all show of concealment, coming from the tangled and almost impenetrable parts of the forest to the clean, open woods
3-021	A partridge would occasionally whir up before us, or a red squirrel snicker and hasten to his den; else the woods appeared quite tenantless.
3-045	Blue jays, two or three small hawks, a solitary wild pigeon, and ruffed grouse were seen along the route.
3-049	Ruffed grouse were found here in great numbers.
4-100	I have known the ruffed grouse to come out of a dense wood and make its nest at the root of a tree within ten paces of the road…
6-014	the ruffed grouse frequently drums at night.
6-015	As I was picking my way over the miry ground and through the rank growths, a ruffed grouse hopped up on a fallen branch a few paces before me, and, jerking his tail, threatened to take flight.
6-016	At sunset the grouse began to drum in all parts of the woods about the lake. I could hear five at one time, thump, thump, thump, thump, thr-r-rrr-r-rr. It was a homely, welcome sound.
6-017	I came upon a brood of young grouse, which diverted me for a moment. The old one blustered about at a furious rate, trying to draw all attention to herself, while the young ones, which were unable to fly, hid themselves. She whined like a dog in great distress, and dragged herself along apparently with the greatest difficulty.
6-018	I went back and caught one of the young, which had simply squatted close to the leaves. I took it up and set it on the palm of my hand, which it hugged as closely as if still upon the ground. I then put it in my coat-sleeve, when it ran and nestled in my armpit.

Sandpiper (Scolopacidae)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
2-077	the other day, by a brook, I came suddenly upon a young sandpiper, a most beautiful creature, enveloped in a soft gray down… and it needed [no signs of plumage], for it escaped me by taking to the water as readily as if it had flown with wings.
5-063	on two nights during the early part of May I heard very clearly the call of the sandpipers.

Savanna Sparrow (Passerculus sandwichensis)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
8-062	In the meadows and low, wet lands the savanna sparrow is met with, and may be known by its fine, insect-like song;

Scarlet Tanager (Piranga olivacea)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
1-069	often the goldfinch, the kingbird, the scarlet tanager delay their coming till then
1-130	occasionally across the hot fields… comes the rich note of the scarlet tanager. This tropical-colored bird loves the hottest weather
2-054	That bit of bright scarlet on yonder dead hemlock, glowing like a live coal against the dark background, seeming almost too brilliant for the severe northern climate, is his relative, the scarlet tanager.
2-055	He is quite a solitary bird, and in this section seems to prefer the high, remote woods, even going quite to the mountain’s top.
2-056	In plumage he is the most brilliant bird we have. … the deep scarlet of his body and the black of his wings and tail are quite perfect.
2-057	This is his holiday suit; in the fall he becomes a dull yellowish green, —the color of the female the whole season.
2-114	I occasionally meet him in the deep hemlocks, and know no stronger contrast in nature. I almost fear he will kindle the dry limb on which he alights.
2-115	But the tanager loses nothing by a near view; the deep scarlet of his body and the black of his wings and tail are quite perfect.

Screech Owl (Megascops asio)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
2-039	I come suddenly upon a brood of screech owls, full grown, sitting together upon a dry, moss-draped limb, but a few feet from the ground… They sit perfectly upright, some with their backs and some with their breasts toward me, but every head turned squarely in my direction.
2-040	It is a singular fact that the plumage of these owls presents two totally distinct phases, which ‘have no relation to sex, age, or season,’ one being an ashen gray, the other a bright rufous.

Sharp-shinned Hawk (Accipiter striatus)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
3-054	These latter recall a singular freak of the sharp-shinned hawk.
3-055	Just then this hawk alighted on the same tree.
3-056	At that instant the little hawk launched into the air and came as straight as an arrow toward me.
3-057	I looked in amazement, but in less than half a minute he was within fifty feet of my face, coming full tilt as if he had sighted my nose.
3-058	Almost in self-defense I let fly one barrel of my gun, and the mangled form of the audacious marauder fell literally between my feet.

Shore Lark (Eremophila alpestris)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
5-014	In the suburbs, came suddenly upon a flock of birds, feeding about like our northern snow buntings. Every now and then they uttered a piping, disconsolate note, as if they had a very sorry time of it. They proved to be shore larks, the first I had ever seen.
5-015	were a little larger than the sparrow; had a black spot on the breast, with much white on the under parts of their bodies.
5-016	I have since discovered that the shore lark is a regular visitant here in February and March, when large quantities of them are shot or trapped, and exposed for sale in the market.

Slate-colored Snowbird (Junco hyemalis)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
2-015	As I enter the woods the slate-colored snowbird starts up before me and chirps sharply. His protest when thus disturbed is almost metallic in its sharpness.
2-016	He breeds here, and is not esteemed a snowbird at all, as he disappears at the near approach of winter, and returns again in spring, like the song sparrow, and is not in any way associated with the cold and the snow.
2-018	The snowbird, or ‘black chipping-bird,’ as it is known among the farmers, is the finest architect of any of the ground-builders known to me. The site of its nest is usually some low bank by the roadside, near a wood.
2-019	Horse and cow hair are plentifully used, imparting to the interior of the nest great symmetry and firmness as well as softness.
4-103	In a certain locality in the interior of New York, I know, every season, where I am sure to find a nest or two of the slate-colored snowbird. It is under the brink of a low mossy bank, so near the highway that it could be reached from a passing vehicle with a whip.
4-104	She awaits the near approach of the sound of feet or wheels, and then darts quickly across the road, barely clearing the ground, and disappears amid- the bushes on the opposite side.

Small Green-crested Flycatcher (Empidonax virescens)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
8-054	…the great crested flycatcher (distinguished from all others by the bright ferruginous color of its tail), and the small green-crested flycatcher.

Solitary Sandpiper (Tringa solitaria)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
3-039	I saw blackbirds at this place, and sparrows, and the solitary sandpiper, and the Canada woodpecker, and a large number of hummingbirds.

Song Sparrow (Melospiza melodia)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
1-003	one or two of the more hardy or half-domesticated species, like the song sparrow and the bluebird, usually arriving in March
1-035	the faint trill of the song sparrow
1-060	The song sparrow, that universal favorite and firstling of the spring, comes before April, and its simple strain gladdens all hearts.
1-085	His song is not so brisk and varied as that of the song sparrow
2-009	the song sparrow’s, faith
4-076	The song sparrow, which is a ground builder, has been known to build in the knothole of a fence rail…
5-001	From some unreclaimed common near by came the first strain of the song sparrow; so homely, because so old and familiar, yet so inexpressibly pleasing.
8-058	The song sparrow, which every child knows, comes first; at least, his voice is first heard. And can there be anything more fresh and pleasing than this first simple strain heard from the garden fence or a near hedge, on some bright, still March morning?

Sooty Tern (Onychoprion fuscatus)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
8-101	…beheld instead a swallow-shaped bird, quite as large as a pigeon, with forked tail, glossy black above and snow-white beneath. Its partly webbed feet, and its long graceful wings, at a glance told that it was a sea-bird;
8-102	The sooty tern is sometimes called the sea-swallow on account of its form and power of flight. It will fly nearly all day at sea, picking up food from the surface of the water.

Sparrows (Passerellidae)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
4-011	Like most of our common species, as the robin, sparrow, bluebird, pewee, wren, etc., this bird sometimes seeks wild, remote localities in which to rear its young; at others, takes up its abode near that of man.
7-011	The other birds that arrive about the same time — the sparrow, the robin, the phoebe-bird — are clad in neutral tints, gray, brown, or russet
P-005	I have done what I could to bring home the ‘river and sky’ with the sparrow I heard ‘singing at dawn on the alder bough.’
3-038	I saw blackbirds at this place, and sparrows, and the solitary sandpiper, and the Canada woodpecker, and a large number of hummingbirds.
4-068	The same is true of the pewees, the kingbird and the sparrows, while the common bluebird, the oriole, and orchard starling afford examples the other way

Swainson’s Warbler (Limnothlypis swainsonii)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
8-033	The rarest of the species are Swainson’s warbler, said to be disappearing…

Swallows (Hirundinidae)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
1-005	The dandelion tells me when to look for the swallow
1-017	pick quarrels with swallows, and seem to deliberate for days over the policy of taking foscible possession of one of the mud-houses of the latter.
1-047	the animation and loquacity of the swallows
1-061	May is the month of the swallows and the orioles… The swallows dive and chatter about the barn, or squeak and build beneath the eaves
2-139	I have seen him [kingbird] turn tail to a swallow, and have known the little pewee in question to whip him beautifully.
4-147	First, those that repair or appropriate the last year’s nest, as the wren, swallow, bluebird, great-crested flycatcher, owls, eagles, fish hawk, and a few others.
4-044	The swallows form an exception to the rule, the excrement being voided by the young over the brink of the nest. They form an exception, also to the rule of secrecy, aiming not so much to conceal the nest as to render it inaccessible.

Thrushes (Turdidae)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
5-064	other thrushes are seen now also, or even earlier, as Wilson’s, the olive-backed, the hermit, the two latter silent, but the former musical.
5-072	The thrushes feed mostly on and near the ground, while some of the vireos and the true flycatchers explore the highest branches.

Turkeys (Meleagris gallopavo)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
4-053	It is generally known that when either the wild turkey or domestic turkey begins to lay, and afterwards to sit and rear the brood, she secludes herself from the male…
4-052	It is generally known that when either the wild turkey or domestic turkey begins to lay, and afterwards to sit and rear the brood, she secludes herself from the male…

Turkey Buzzard (Cathartes aura)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
5-006	Over a deserted field a turkey buzzard hovered low, and alighted on a stake in the fence, standing a moment with outstretched, vibrating wings till he was sure of his hold.
5-010	The turkey buzzards are noticeable about Washington as soon as the season begins to open, sailing leisurely along two or three hundred feet overhead, or sweeping low over some common or open space where, perchance, a dead puppy or pig or fowl has been thrown.
5-011	Their movements when in air are very majestic and beautiful to the eye, being in every respect identical with those of our common hen or red-tailed hawk.
5-012	He excites the enmity of none, for the reason that he molests none.
5-013	On alighting, each one would blow very audibly through his nose, just as a cow does when she lies down; this is the only sound I have ever heard the buzzard make.

Turtle Dove (Zenaida macroura)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
4-139	About the thinnest, shallowest nest, for its situation, that can be found is that of the turtle dove. A few sticks and straws are carelessly thrown together, hardly sufficient to prevent the eggs from falling through or rolling off.

Varied Thrush (Ixoreus naevius)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
8-083	Thus, the varied thrush of the West is our robin, a little differently marked;

Veery (Catharus fuscescens)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
1-101	I miss in the woods the veery, the hermit thrush, the chestnut-sided warbler, the blue-backed warbler, the green-backed warbler, the black and yellow warbler
1-114	If we take the quality of melody as the test, the wood thrush, hermit thrush, and the veery thrush stand at the head of our list of songsters.
1-125	The soft, mellow flute of the veery fills a place in the chorus of the woods that the song of the vesper sparrow fills in the chorus of the fields.
5-035	I have heard the veery thrush in the trees near the White House; and one rainy April morning… he came and blew his soft, mellow flute in a pear-tree in my garden.

Vesper Sparrow (Pooecetes gramineus)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
8-059	The field or vesper sparrow, called also grass finch and bay-winged sparrow… is abundant in all our upland fields and pastures, and is a very sweet songster. It builds upon the ground, without the slightest cover or protection, and also roosts there.
8-060	When disturbed by day, they fly with a quick, sharp movement, showing two white quills in the tail.
8-061	They sing much after sundown, hence the aptness of the name vesper sparrow, which a recent writer, Wilson Flagg, has bestowed upon them.
5-020	delighted to see a number of grass finches or vesper sparrows, birds which will be forever associated in my mind with my father’s sheep pastures.
3-009	In one of the stumpy fields I saw an old favorite in the grass finch or vesper sparrow. It was sitting on a tall charred stub with food in its beak.

Warblers (Parulidae)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
2-080	The ground warblers all have one notable feature, very beautiful legs, as white and delicate as if they had always worn silk stockings and satin slippers.
2-137	High tree warblers have dark brown or black legs and more brilliant plumage, but less musical ability.
3-028	Presently three or four shy wood warblers came to look upon this strange creature that had wandered into their haunts; else I passed quite unnoticed.
5-034	Rare warblers, as the blackpoll, the yellow red-poll, and the bay-breasted, pausing in May on their northward journey, pursue their insect game in the very heart of the town.
5-062	The warblers begin to return about the same time, and are clearly distinguished by their timid yeaps.
5-065	Occasionally in the earlier part of May I find the woods literally swarming with warblers, exploring every branch and leaf, from the tallest tulip to the lowest spice-bush, so urgent is the demand for food during their long northern journeys.
5-066	Some varieties, as the blue yellow-back, the chestnut-sided, and the Blackburnian, during their brief stay, sing nearly as freely as in their breeding-haunts.
5-070	Six or eight feet higher bounds the usual range of such birds as the worm-eating warbler, the mourning ground warbler, the Maryland yellow-throat.
7-023	among our warblers the blue tint is very common.
8-018	The warblers are, perhaps, the most puzzling.
8-019	These are the true Sylvia, the real wood-birds. They are small, very active, but feeble songsters, and, to be seen, must be sought for.

Warbling Vireo (Vireo gilvus)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
2-007	He resembles somewhat the warbling vireo, and the two birds are often confounded by careless observers. Both warble in the same cheerful strain, but the latter more continuously and rapidly.
8-039	There are five species found in most of our woods, namely, the red-eyed vireo, the white-eyed vireo, the warbling vireo, the yellow-throated vireo, and the solitary vireo, the red-eyed and warbling being most abundant, and the white-eyed being the most lively and animated songster.

Water-fowls (Anatidae)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
4-047	Other exceptions are the pigeons, hawks, and water-fowls.

Water-thrush (Parkesia)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
1-106	returning by a stumpy, shallow pond, I am sure to find the water-thrush.

Water-wagtail (Seiurus aurocapilla)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
2-049	In this song you instantly detect his relationship to the water-wagtail, erroneously called water-thrush, whose song is likewise a sudden burst, full and ringing, and with a tone of youthful joyousness in it, as if the bird had just had some unexpected good fortune.
6-045	there was something in the tone of it that told me the bird was related to the wood-wagtail and to the water-wagtail or thrush.

Western Bluebird (Sialia mexicana)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
7-025	The Western bluebird is considered a distinct species, and is perhaps a little more brilliant and showy than its Eastern brother; and Nuttall thinks its song is more varied, sweet, and tender.
7-026	Its color approaches to ultramarine, while it has a sash of chestnut-red across its shoulders, all the effects, I suspect, of that wonderful air and sky of California

Whip-poor-will (Antrostomus vociferus)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
6-012	I have heard the hair bird… [singing at night]

White-eyed Flycatcher (Vireo griseus)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
2-012	the white-eyed flycatcher’s, self-consciousness

White-eyed Vireo (Vireo griseus)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
1-090	the white-eyed vireo, or flycatcher… a little hard and shrill, like that of the indigo-bird or oriole; but for brightness, volubility, execution, and lover of imitation, he is unsurpassed by any of our northern birds.
1-093	chick-a-FEW-chick he seems to say, hiding himself in the low, dense undergrowth… Such a medley of notes, snatched from half the songsters of the field and forest
1-094	You are to look for him, not in tall trees or deep forests, but in low, dense shrubbery about wet places, where there are plenty of gnats and mosquitoes.
8-038	There are five species found in most of our woods, namely, the red-eyed vireo, the white-eyed vireo, the warbling vireo, the yellow-throated vireo, and the solitary vireo, the red-eyed and warbling being most abundant, and the white-eyed being the most lively and animated songster.
8-042	I meet the latter bird only in the thick, bushy growths of low, swampy localities, where, eluding the observer, it pours forth its song with a sharpness and a rapidity of articulation that are truly astonishing.
8-043	The iris of this bird is white, as that of the red-eyed is red, though in neither case can this mark be distinguished at more than two or three yards.

White-throated Sparrow (Zonotrichia albicollis)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
3-010	I at last discovered that it was the white-throated sparrow, a common bird all through this region.
3-011	Its song is very delicate and plaintive, a thin, wavering, tremulous whistle, which disappoints one, however, as it ends when it seems only to have begun.
3-012	If the bird could give us the finishing strain of which this seems only the prelude, it would stand first among feathered songsters.

Wilson’s Thrush (Catharus fuscescens)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
2-025	I see by his impulsive, graceful movements, and his dimly speckled breast, that it is a thrush. Presently he utters a few soft, mellow, flute-like notes, one of the most simple expressions of melody to be heard, and scuds away, and I see it is the veery, or Wilson’s thrush.
2-026	He is the least of the thrushes in size, being about that of the common bluebird, and he may be distinguished from his relatives by the dimness of the spots upon his breast.
2-101	in the veery, the marks are almost obsolete, and a few rods off his breast presents only a dull yellowish appearance.
2-102	To get a good view of him you have only to sit down in his haunts, as in such cases he seems equally anxious to get a good view of you.
4-101	Traversing remote mountain-roads through dense woods, I have repeatedly seen the veery, or Wilson’s thrush, sitting upon her nest, so near me that I could almost take her from it by stretching out my hand.
6-020	the hermit thrush and the veery, or Wilson’s thrush, were common [in the higher lands of the Catskills].
6-049	I had stated in print on two occasions that the wood thrush was not found in the higher lands of the Catskills, but that the hermit thrush and the veery, or Wilson’s thrush, were common.

Winter Wren (Troglodytes hiemalis)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
1-009	This pert little winter wren, for instance, darting in and out the fence, diving under the rubbish here and coming up yards away, how does he manage with those little circular wings to compass degrees and zones, and arrive always in the nick of time?
1-010	Last August I saw him in the remotest wilds of the Adirondacks, impatient and inquisitive as usual; a few weeks later, on the Potomac, I was greeted by the same hardy little busybody.
1-095	He possesses the fluency and copiousness for which the wrens are noted… a wild, sweet, rhythmical cadence that holds you entranced.
1-096	loitering in a low, ancient hemlock wood… the silence was suddenly broken by a strain so rapid and gushing, and touched with such a wild, sylvan plaintiveness
1-097	In summer he is one of those birds of the deep northern forests, that, like the speckled Canada warbler and the hermit thrush, only the privileged ones hear.
2-020	This nook is the chosen haunt of the winter wren. This is the only place and these the only woods in which I find him in this vicinity.
2-021	Indeed, his song is very strong for so small a bird, and unites in a remarkable degree brilliancy and plaintiveness. I think of a tremulous vibrating tongue of silver.
2-022	He is nearly the color of the ground and the leaves; he never ascends the tall trees, but keeps low, flitting from stump to stump and from root to root, dodging in and out of his hiding places, and watching all intruders with a suspicious eye.
2-023	His tail stands more than perpendicular: it points straight toward his head.
2-024	He is the least ostentatious singer I know of. He does not strike an attitude, and lift up his head in preparation, and, as it were, clear his throat; but sits there on a log and pours out his music, looking straight before him, or even down at the ground.
2-098	His voice fills these dim aisles, as if aided by some marvelous sounding-board.
2-099	You may know it is the song of a wren, from its gushing lyrical character; but you must needs look sharp to see the little minstrel, especially while in the act of singing.
2-100	As a songster, he has but few superiors. I do not hear him after the first week in July.
6-023	the winter wren, the first I had heard in these woods, set his music-box going, which fairly ran over with fine, gushing, lyrical sounds.
6-024	There can be no doubt but this bird is one of our finest songsters. If it would only thrive and sing well when caged, like the canary, how far it would surpass that bird!
6-025	It has all the vivacity and versatility of the canary, without any of its shrillness. Its song is indeed a little cascade of melody.
8-066	It is an exquisite songster, and pours forth its notes so rapidly, and with such sylvan sweetness and cadence, that it seems to go off like a musical alarm.

Wood Duck (Aix sponsa)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
8-014	As I stood there, half-leg deep, picking them up, a wood duck came flying down the creek and passed over my head.
8-015	Presently it returned, flying up; then it came back again, and, sweeping low around a bend, prepared to alight in a still, dark reach in the creek which was hidden from my view.
8-016	As I passed that way about half an hour afterward, the duck started up, uttering its wild alarm note. In the stillness I could hear the whistle of its wings and the splash of the water when it took flight.

Woodpeckers (Picidae)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
7-035	There seems to be more equality of the sexes among the woodpeckers, wrens, and swallows
7-074	There seems to be more equality of the sexes among the woodpeckers, wrens, and swallows
8-010	There was the robin, the blue jay, the bluebird, the yellowbird, the cherry-bird, the catbird, the chipping bird, the woodpecker, the high-hole, an occasional redbird, and a few others, in the woods up along their borders, but whoever dreamed that there were still others that not even the hunters saw, and whose names no one had ever heard.
4-020	The woodpeckers all build in about the same manner, excavating the trunk or branch of a decayed tree and depositing the eggs on the fine fragments of wood at the bottom of the cavity.
4-021	Though the nest is not especially an artistic work, requiring strength rather than skill, yet the eggs and the young of few other birds are so completely housed from the elements, or protected from their natural enemies, the jays, crows, hawks, and owls.
4-026	A tree with a natural cavity is never selected, but one which has been dead just long enough to have become soft and brittle throughout.
4-027	The bird goes in horizontally for a few inches, making a hole perfectly round and smooth and adapted to his size, then turns downward, gradually enlarging the hole, as he proceeds, to the depth of ten, fifteen, twenty inches, according to the softness of the tree and the urgency of the mother bird to deposit her eggs.
4-028	While excavating, male and female work alternately.
4-036	With woodpeckers and kindred species, and with birds Chat [that] burrow in the ground, as bank swallows, kingfishers, etc., it is a necessity. The accumulation of the excrement in the nest would prove most fatal to the young.
6-038	The birds were unusually plentiful and noisy about the head of this lake; robins, blue jays, and woodpeckers greeted me with their familiar notes.
6-041	I also heard here, as I had at two or three other points in the course of the day, the peculiar, resonant hammering of some species of woodpecker upon the hard, dry limbs.
6-042	Its peculiarity was the ordered succession of the raps, which gave it the character of a premeditated performance. There were first three strokes following each other rapidly, then two much louder ones with longer intervals between them.

Wood Pewee (Contopus virens)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
2-036	Everywhere in these solitudes I am greeted with the pensive, almost pathetic note of the wood pewee. The pewees are the true flycatchers, and are easily identified. They are very characteristic birds, have strong family traits and pugnacious dispositions.
4-137	The wood pewee builds a neat, compact, socket-shaped nest of moss and lichens on a horizontal branch. There is never a loose end or shred about it. The sitting bird is largely visible above the rim.
8-049	The common or wood pewee excites the most pleasant emotions, both on account of its plaintive note and its exquisite mossy nest.

Wood Sparrow (Spizella pusilla)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
4-097	The nests with eggs were far less elaborate and compact than the earlier nests, from which the young had flown.
1-088	wood or bush sparrow, usually called by the ornithologists Spizella pusilla… He prefers remote bushy heathery fields, where his song is one of the sweetest to be heard.
1-089	Its song is like the words, fe-o, fe-o, fe-o, few, few, few, fee fee fee, uttered at first high and leisurely, but running very rapidly toward the close, which is low and soft.
1-105	In a remote clearing, covered with heath and fern… I go to hear in July the wood sparrow

Wood Thrush (Hylocichla mustelina)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
1-006	the dogtooth violet when to expect the wood-thrush
1-058	I doubt if the Native Americans heard the wood thrush as we hear him.
1-102	find in their stead the wood thrush, the chewink, the redstart, the yellow throat, the yellow-breasted flycatcher, the white-eyed flycatcher, the quail, and the turtle dove.
1-108	But the crowning glory of all these robins, flycatchers, and warblers is the wood thrush. More abundant than all other birds, except the robin and catbird
1-111	Shy and reserved when he first makes his appearance in May, before the end of June he is tame and familiar, and sings on the tree over your head
1-112	If we take the quality of melody as the test, the wood thrush, hermit thrush, and the veery thrush stand at the head of our list of songsters.
1-118	The song of the wood thrush is more golden and leisurely. Its tone comes near to that of some rare stringed instrument.
1-119	He is truly a royal minstrel, and, considering his liberal distribution throughout our Atlantic seaboard, perhaps contributes more than any other bird to our sylvan melody.
1-120	Such a finely proportioned form! How plain, yet rich, his color, the bright russet of his back, the clear white of his breast, with the distinct heart-shaped spots!
1-122	The mavis, or red thrush, sneaks and skulks like a culprit, hiding in the densest alders
2-027	The wood thrush has very clear, distinct oval spots on a white ground
3-001	Thoreau made three excursions into the Maine woods, and, though he started the moose and caribou, had nothing more novel to report by way of bird notes than the songs of the wood thrush and the pewee.
5-044	On the 1st of May I go to the Rock Creek or Piny Branch region to hear the wood thrush. I always find him by this date leisurely chanting his lofty strain.
6-004	Now the golden trillide-de of the wood thrush sounded through the silent woods.
6-005	While looking for a fish-pole about half way down the mountain, I saw a thrush’s nest in a little sapling about ten feet from the ground.
6-006	At the first faint signs of day a wood thrush sang, a few rods below us. Then after a little delay, as the gray light began to grow around, thrushes broke out in full song in all parts of the woods. I thought I had never before heard them sing so sweetly.
6-007	Such a leisurely, golden chant! It consoled us for all we had undergone.
6-008	In fact, a bird in all cases roosts where it builds, and the wood thrush occupies, as it were, the first story of the woods.
6-009	The wood thrush is found also, but is much more rare and secluded in its habits than either of the others, being seen only during the breeding season on remote mountains, and then only on their eastern and southern slopes.
6-010	I have never yet in this region found the bird spending the season in the near and familiar woods, which is directly contrary to observations I have made in other parts of the State.
6-046	I had stated in print on two occasions that the wood thrush was not found in the higher lands of the Catskills, but that the hermit thrush and the veery, or Wilson’s thrush, were common. It turns out that this statement is only half true.
6-047	The wood thrush is found also, but is much more rare and secluded in its habits than either of the others, being seen only during the breeding season on remote mountains, and then only on their eastern and southern slopes.
8-056	The wood thrush and the hermit stand at the head as songsters, no two persons, perhaps, agreeing as to which is the superior.
8-078	In size this bird approaches the wood thrush, being larger than either the hermit or the veery; unlike all other species, no part of its plumage has a tawny or yellowish tinge.

Wood-wagtail (Seiurus aurocapilla)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
8-074	The song of the wood-wagtail, he says, consists of a short succession of simple notes beginning with emphasis and gradually falling. The truth is they run up the scale instead of down, beginning low and ending in a shriek.
6-044	there was something in the tone of it that told me the bird was related to the wood-wagtail and to the water-wagtail or thrush.

Worm-eating Warbler (Helmitheros vermivorum)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
1-104	In a dense undergrowth of spice-bush, witch-hazel, and alder, I meet the worm-eating warbler.

Wrens (Troglodytidae)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
1-016	They wage war against robins and wrens
4-014	Like most of our common species, as the robin, sparrow, bluebird, pewee, wren, etc., this bird sometimes seeks wild, remote localities in which to rear its young; at others, takes up its abode near that of man.
4-146	First, those that repair or appropriate the last year’s nest, as the wren, swallow, bluebird, great-crested flycatcher, owls, eagles, fish hawk, and a few others.

Yellow Warbler (Setophaga petechia)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
5-028	Among the permanent summer residents here (one might say city residents, as they seem more abundant in town than out), the yellow warbler or summer yellowbird is conspicuous.
5-029	He comes about the middle of April, and seems particularly attached to the silver poplars. In every street, and all day long, one may hear his thin, sharp warble.
5-030	When nesting, the female comes about the yard, pecking at the clothes-line, and gathering up bits of thread to weave into her nest.
8-022	Throughout the Middle and Eastern States, half a dozen species or so may be found in almost every locality, as the redstart, the Maryland yellow-throat, the yellow warbler… the hooded warbler, the black and white creeping warbler…
8-028	The summer yellowbird, or yellow warbler, is not now a wood-bird at all, being found in orchards and parks, and along streams and in the trees of villages and cities.

Yellow-bellied Woodpecker (Sphyrapicus varius)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
4-032	I shall never forget the circumstance of observing a pair of yellow-bellied woodpeckers—the most rare and secluded, and, next to the red-headed, the most beautiful species found in our woods—breeding in an old, truncated beech in the Beaverkill Mountains, an offshoot of the Catskills.
4-033	The entrance to the nest was on the east side of the tree, about twenty-five feet from the ground.
4-034	At intervals of scarcely a minute, the old birds, one after another, would alight upon the edge of the hole with a grub or worm in their beaks…
4-035	…the bird would again emerge, but this time bearing in its beak the ordure of one of the helpless family. Flying away very slowly with head lowered and extended, as if anxious to hold the offensive object as far from its plumage as possible, the bird dropped the unsavory morsel in the course of a few yards…
4-048	I saw that Audubon had made a mistake in figuring or describing the female of this species with the red spot upon the head. I have seen a number of pairs of them, and in no instance have I seen the mother bird marked with red.
6-043	As the yellow-bellied woodpecker was the most abundant species in these woods, I attributed it to him.

Yellow-billed Cuckoo (Coccyzus americanus)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
1-075	The black-billed is the only species found in my locality, the yellow-billed abounds farther south.
1-076	The yellow-billed will take up his stand in a tree, and explore its branches till he has caught every worm. He sits on a twig, and with a peculiar swaying movement of his head examines the surrounding foliage.

Yellow-breasted Chat (Icteria virens)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
5-051	The catbird is mild and feminine compared with this rollicking polyglot. His voice is very loud and strong and quite uncanny.
5-052	Now he barks like a puppy, then quacks like a duck, then rattles like a kingfisher, then squalls like a fox, then caws like a crow, then mews like a cat.
5-075	Observing one very closely one day, I discovered that he was limited to six notes or changes, which he went through in regular order, scarcely varying a note in a dozen repetitions.
5-076	And such a curious, expressive flight, legs extended, head lowered, wings rapidly vibrating, the whole action piquant and droll!
5-077	Its plumage is remarkably firm and compact. Color above, light olive-green; beneath, bright yellow; beak, black and strong.

Yellow-rumped Warbler (Setophaga coronata)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
3-015	By a little trout-brook in a low part of the woods adjoining the clearing, I had a good time pursuing and identifying a number of warblers, the speckled Canada, the black-throated blue, the yellow-rumped, and Audubon’s warbler.
5-058	To my surprise, saw a chewink also, and the yellow-rumped warbler.
8-031	The yellow-rumped warblers are the most noticeable of all in the autumn. They come about the streets and garden, and seem especially drawn to dry, leafless trees. They dart spitefully about, uttering a sharp chirp.

Yellow-throated Vireo (Vireo flavifrons)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
8-040	There are five species found in most of our woods, namely, the red-eyed vireo, the white-eyed vireo, the warbling vireo, the yellow-throated vireo, and the solitary vireo, the red-eyed and warbling being most abundant, and the white-eyed being the most lively and animated songster.

Yellow Warbler (Setophaga petechia)

Quote ID	Verbatim Quote
8-028	The summer yellowbird, or yellow warbler, is not now a wood-bird at all, being found in orchards and parks, and along streams and in the trees of villages and cities.