Birds and Birding's Guide to:

Watching THE SPARROW-LIKE BIRDS

THE FREE-TOED PERCHING BIRDS

THE OVEN-BIRDS AND ALLIES

The Oven-birds

(Furnarius), so called from the curious nest structures they build, number upward of a dozen species and spread widely over South America from Panama to Argentina. They range in size between five and seven inches and are clad in plumages of clear browns and white, one of the best-known being the Red Oven-bird (F. rufus) of Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay. This bird, says Mr. Hudson,”is an extremely well-known species in Argentina and where found is a great favorite on account of its familiarity with man, its loud, ringing, cheerful voice, and its wonderful mud nest, which it prefers to build near a human habitation. ... In favorable seasons the Oven-birds begin building in the autumn, and the work is resumed during the winter, whenever there is a spell of mild, wet weather. Some of their structures are finished early in winter, others not until spring, everything depending on the weather and the condition of the birds. In cold, dry weather, and when food is scarce the birds do not work at all. The site chosen is a stout, horizontal branch, or the top of a post, and they also frequently build on a cornice or the roof of a house, and sometimes, but rarely, on the ground. The material used is mud, with the addition of horsehair or slender, fibrous rootlets, which make the structure harder and prevent it from cracking. When finished, the structure is shaped outwardly like a baker's oven, only with a deeper and narrower entrance. It is always placed very conspicuously, and with the entrance facing a building, if one be near, or if at a road side, it looks toward the road; the reason for this being, no doubt, that the bird keeps a cautious eye on the movements of people near it while building, and so leaves the nest open and unfinished on that side until the last, and there the entrance is necessarily formed. When the structure has assumed the globular form with only a narrow opening, the wall on one side is curved inward, reaching from the floor to the dome, and at the inner extremity an aperture is left to admit the bird to the interior or second chamber, in which the eggs are laid. A man's hand fits easily into the first or entrance chamber, but cannot be twisted about so as to reach the eggs in the interior cavity, the entrance being so small and high up. The interior is lined with dry, soft grass, and there the pure white, pear-shaped eggs are laid. The oven is a foot or more in diameter, and is sometimes very massive, weighing eight or nine pounds, and so strong that, unless loosened by the swaying of the branch, it often remains unharmed for two or three years. The birds incubate by turns, and when one returns from the feeding grounds, it sings its loud notes, on which the sitting bird rushes forth to join in the joyous chorus, and then flies away, the other taking its place on the eggs. A new oven is built every year, and I have more than once seen a second oven built on top of the first."

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