Louisiana Water Thrush (Seiurus Motacilla) Wood Warbler Family
Length -- 6 to 6.28 inches. Just a trifle smaller than the English sparrow. Male and Female -- Grayish olive-brown upper parts, with conspicuous white line over the eye and reaching almost to the nape. Underneath white, tinged with pale buff. Throat and line through the middle, plain. Other parts streaked with very dark brown, rather faintly on the breast, giving them the speckled breast of the thrushes. Heavy, dark bill. Range -- United States, westward to the plains; northward to southern New England. Winters in the tropics. Migrations -- Late April. October. Summer resident.

This bird, that so delighted Audubon with its high-trilled song as he tramped with indefatigable zeal through the hammocks of the Gulf States, seems to be almost the counterpart of the Northern water thrush, just as the loggerhead is the Southern counterpart of the Northern shrike. Very many Eastern birds have their duplicates in Western species, as we all know, and it is most interesting to trace the slight external variations that different climates and diet have produced on the same bird, and thus differentiated the species. In winter the Northern water thrush visits the cradle of its kind, the swamps of Louisiana and Florida, and, no doubt, by daily contact with its congeners there, keeps close to their cherished traditions, from which it never deviates farther than Nature compels, though it penetrate to the arctic regions during its summer journeys.