Seiurus aurocapilla
Order Passeriformes
Family Parulidae
Adult.— Upper parts brown; crown dull orange, edged with black; breast and sides spotted with black.
Nest, a bulky structure of dry leaves and stalks, on the ground, with the opening at the side.
Eggs, white, spotted with reddish-brown.
The Oven-bird is a common summer resident throughout New England and New York, arriving early in May and lingering through September. It inhabits woodland of every sort, if there are open spaces under the trees where it may walk over the ground in search of food. It prefers, however, dry open woods of deciduous trees. Here its loud song, Teacher, TEACHER, TEACHER, TEACH, to modify Mr. Burroughs’s version, is one of the first sounds to attract the ear. When uttering it, the bird is generally perched on a rather high limb, but at other times it walks with pinkish feet over the dry leaves or along some low limb, with a constant upward tilt of the tail. Towards evening and at intervals during the night, one is surprised, while walking in or near woodland, by a burst of rather rapid music from a bird high overhead, and as he shoots earthward a few phrases remind one of the teacher teach of the Oven-bird. This is the famous flight-song of the Oven-bird, not rare, but rarely heard, unless one happen to live in the very woods. Its alarm-note is a vigorous tschuk. When the brooding female is frightened off the nest, she tries to draw the intruder away from the spot by fluttering helplessly along the ground, trailing behind her an apparently broken wing.
Hoffmann – A Guide to the Birds of New England and Eastern New York (1904)