Species Profile ~ Ovenbird

Seiurus aurocapillus

by Samantha Gates

They don’t really look like it, but Ovenbirds are a type of warbler. They are seven to eight inches long and can weigh up to 18 grams. They are very plump looking birds with pink legs and a whitish eye ring. Their chests are white and streaked with black and their backs are an olive-green color. They have thin pointed bills and orange lines on the crown bordered by dark brown.  

For food, Ovenbirds forage on the ground in dead leaves, and hover in the air catching insects. They eat a variety of things including insects, cankerworms, a lot of spruce bud worms, and in the winter they will eat seeds. 

Ovenbirds breed in mature deciduous and mixed forests.  They build their unique, camouflaged nest on the ground, using leaves and grasses to form a dome like shape, like an old fashioned oven. This is how they got their name.

You can find Ovenbirds anywhere northeast of the Rockies.  They are common in summer in Newfoundland, and in the southern US, east of the Rockies. They are common in summer in eastern woods, but are easily overlooked as it walks along on the ground in a slow dainty style.  

They migrate to the southern US, the West Indies, and winter primarily in second growth forests. They are capable of crossing the Atlantic Ocean, since there have been a handful of records in Norway, Ireland, and Great Britain. All of these finds were dead birds. In the 1930’s, Lou Campbell observed an Ovenbird in Jerusalem Township, in Lucas County, Ohio, on November 9th. That’s very late in the season for an Ovenbird to not have flown south.

More often heard than seen, the song of the Ovenbird is a good way to identify it. It’s song, given like an emphatic chant that grows louder at the end,  sounds like, “teacher, teacher, teacher”.   Thus, it is sometimes called the “Teacher Bird”.

The Ovenbird’s eggs are ground colored and have white backgrounds with markings that are speckled with hazel, lilac, grey, and reddish-brown. Clutch size ranges from three to six eggs. Ovenbirds are vulnerable to nest parasitism by the Brown-headed Cowbird, but it’s numbers seem to be stable. It appears that they increase their clutch size and can produce up to three broods per year if there is a good spruce bud worm population.

 


Page last updated on Thursday July 24, 2008