of a leaf. This is his characteristic movement. 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. He is on the ground nearly all the time, moving rapidly
along, taking spiders and bugs, overturning leaves, peeping under
sticks and into crevices, and every now and then leaping up eight or
ten inches to take his game from beneath some overhanging leaf or
branch. Thus each species has its range more or less marked. Draw a
line three feet from the ground, and you mark the usual limit of the
Kentucky warbler's quest for food. 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. 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. The thrushes feed mostly on and near the
ground, while some of the vireos and the true flycatchers explore the
highest branches. But the warblers, as a rule, are all partial to
thick, rank undergrowths.

The Kentucky warbler is a large bird for the genus and quite notable
in appearance. 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.

Another familiar bird here, which I never met with in the North, is
the gnatcatcher, called by Audubon the blue-gray flycatching warbler.
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, goes through a variety of motions when disturbed by
your presence, and in many ways recalls its dusky prototype. 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. Its song is a lisping, chattering, incoherent warble,
now faintly reminding one of the goldfinch, now of a miniature
catbird, then of a tiny yellow-hammer, having much variety, but no
unity and little cadence.

Another bird which has interested me here is the Louisiana water
thrush, called also large-billed water-thrush, and water-wagtail. It
is one of a trio of birds which has confused the ornithologists much.
The other two species are the well-known golden-crowned thrush o