Ground nesting trades one set of risks for another. The nest is out of reach of many aerial predators but exposed to mammals moving through the litter. The ovenbird's answer is concealment rather than inaccessibility. The female builds a dome of dead leaves, grass and rootlets sunk into the litter layer, with a low opening on one side, so from above it reads as an ordinary patch of forest floor. The resemblance to a traditional domed bread oven gave the bird its name.
The bird's other signature is volume. The ringing teacher-teacher-teacher song carries far through closed forest, and it is one of the defining sounds of eastern woodland interior in early summer. Ovenbirds also walk deliberately along the ground rather than hopping, which separates them at a glance from most warblers.
One clarification worth making: the North American ovenbird is unrelated to the South American ovenbirds of the family Furnariidae, which build clay nests. Both names describe an oven-shaped nest, arrived at independently.