Of these the Kentucky warbler is by far the most interesting, though quite rare.  I meet with him in low, damp places in the woods, usually on the steep sides of some little run.  I hear at intervals a clear, strong, bell-like whistle or warble, and presently catch a glimpse of the bird as he jumps up from the ground to take an insect or worm from the under side 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 or wood-wagtail, and the northern, or small, water-thrush.