Ovenbird (Seiurus aurocapilla)
Birds of North Carolina: Ovenbird (North Carolina Bird Club)
Ovenbirds nest in large numbers over nearly all of North Carolina, always in forests with a leafy ground cover; these forests always have a moderate (but not dense) shrub and understory layer, beneath a varied canopy, in many settings (except overly wet places). Favored habitats are middle-aged to mature pine-hardwood stands, oak-hickory forests, and drier portions of floodplain forests.
All About Birds: Ovenbird (Cornell Lab of Ornithology)
Look for Ovenbirds in closed-canopy forests, the larger the better. As you carefully track down the source of the song, watch both in areas of open ground on the forest floor and on low branches up to as high as the lower canopy. When they’re foraging, Ovenbirds are usually on the ground and are not overly shy.
Ovenbird (Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency)
The name for this warbler Ovenbird, comes from the dome-shaped nest it builds on the forest floor. Both the bird and the nest are well camouflaged but the teacher-teacher-teacher song is loud and conspicuous. Ovenbirds spend most of their time foraging in the leaf litter and can look quite comical as they walk, not hop, with their tail tilted up.
Ovenbird (Bird Watcher’s Digest)
This deep forest bird only thrives where forests remain in large blocks, probably because if clearings are nearby, there are more nest predators and parasitic brown-headed cowbirds. Ovenbirds nest in mature deciduous or mixed deciduous and pine forests in the northern part of the Southeast, but they appear throughout the region during spring and fall migration.