Listening to a Continent Sing

Like a metronome, this ovenbird delivers his crescendo song, each song building in intensity through to the final phase. It's a "teacher" song all right, but the "te" is so brief and relatively soft that the song is dominated by the emphatic, down-slurred CHER, sounding like a series of t-CHER phrases.

Background

A pileated woodpecker drums in the distance initially, with distant black-throated blue warbler, hermit thrush, scarlet tanager, chestnut-sided warbler.

Photo by John Van de Graaff