Species Profile:
Ovenbird

The Ovenbird (Seiurus aurocapillus) derives its common name from its distinctive nest which is domed and has a side entrance, giving it the appearance of an old-fashioned oven. Made of grasses and fibrous bark, the nest is built by the female on the ground. She places dry leaves and sticks on top of the dome and may line the inside with deer hair.

Her four or five eggs are white with fine speckling and a wreath of brown, gray and lilac spots around the larger end. They hatch in about 12 days, and instead of just sweeping the shells out the door the female eats them! The young leave the nest in a little over a week. Each parent takes half of the fledglings under his or her wing, so to speak, and feeds them for up to three weeks.

The Ovenbird, which is larger than most of its fellow warblers (six inches from tip of beak to tip of tail), eats mostly insects and spiders found on the ground but occasionally takes seeds and berries as well.

Well-camouflaged by their olive-brown back and streaked breast, Ovenbirds are hard to spot. Once you see them, though, there's no mistaking the orange stripe on their heads which accounts for their species name aurocapillus. It is usually the Ovenbird's call that reveals its presence, though, the famous "TEACHER, TEACHER, TEACHER, TEACHER" which gets louder with each syllable!

Robert Frost, in his 1929 poem aptly entitled "The Ovenbird" wrote:
There is a singer everyone has heard, Loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird,
Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again.
He says that leaves are old and that for flowers
Mid-summer is to spring as one to ten.
He says the early petal-fall is past
When pear and cherry bloom went down in showers
On sunny days a moment overcast;
And comes that other fall we name the fall.
He says the highway dust is over all.
The bird would cease and be as other birds
But that he knows in singing not to sing.
The question that he frames in all but words
Is what to make of a diminishing thing.

Unfortunately, Ovenbird numbers have shown a significant decline in the last 20 years. This is partly due to their preference for large, undisturbed tracts of deciduous or mixed forest as breeding habitat; so many of these areas have been logged or developed. Lit buildings are also a threat to night-migrating Ovenbirds. In 1997, over one-fifth of the birds found by FLAP were Ovenbirds. Their vulnerability makes them that much more precious, and our desire to protect them that much stronger.

Chris Earley