“I regret that I am unable to give any account of the habits of a species which I have honoured with the name of a naturalist whose merits are so well known to the learned world.  The individual represented in the plate I shot upwards of twenty years ago, and have never met with another of its kind.  It was in the month of May, on a small island of the Perkioming [i.e. Perkiomen] Creek, forming part of my farm of Mill Grove, in the State of Pennsylvania.  The bird was fluttering amongst grasses, uttering an often repeated cheep.

The plant on which it is represented is that on which it was perched when I shot it, and is usually called Spider-wort.  It grows in damp and shady places, as well as sometimes in barren lands, near the banks of brooks.

–J. J. Audubon, Ornithological Biography, I (1831), 153 [excerpted].