WRENS. 421 



October last, I observed a busy pair of these little birds, for some 

 time, in a garden in the city of Boston ; they kept up a perpetual 

 mutual call, in a querulous note like Chicadees, and had the crown 

 simply orange-yellow. They pursued their eager search for eggs and 

 dormant larvae of insects, without taking any alarm at my near ap- 

 proach. On striking the tree, on which they 9, e, sharply with a 

 stick or stone, these little timid birds have been found to drop down 

 dead. 



My friend, Mr. C. Pickering, informs me, that in the European 

 specimen in the Philadelphia Museum (apparently a young bird) the 

 bright colors of the crest are not very visible, and that the black ex- 

 ternal band seems to be mixed with white feathers ; there is also 

 a tint of yellow on the sides of the neck and back, brighter towards 

 the breast, which is not at all observable on the American speci- 

 mens, of either sex. The bill is likewise longer and more slender 

 than in our R. tricolor. 



WRENS. (Troglodytes.) 



In these birds the bill is slender, subulate, somewhat arched and 

 elongated, also acute, compressed, and without notch ; mandibles 

 equal. Nostrils basal, oval, half closed by a membrane. Tongue 

 slender, the tip divided into 2 or 3 small bristles. Feet slender, 

 tarsus longer than the middle toe ; inner toe free ; posterior v/ith a 

 larger nail than the rest. — The icings short, concave, and rounded, 

 furnished often with a conspicuous spurious feather or short prima- 

 ry ; 3d, 4th, and 5th primaries longest. 



The female and young hardly differ in plumage from the adult 

 male. The moult is annual. The plumage thick and long, is 

 always composed of sombre colors. The body is roundish, and the 

 tail almost constantly erected. They are small musical birds, active, 

 courageous, and capricious in their movements, almost always hid in 

 thickets and bushes, keeping near the ground, to which they often 

 descend to forage for worms and insects, and showing a fondness for 

 prying into holes and dark places, as well as among logs, &c., where 

 they more particularly surprise their prey of spiders and moths. The 

 nest is constructed with much art, and the eggs are commonly nu- 

 merous. 



36 



