680 MICHIGAN BIRD LIFE. 



that mud has ])cen used; we have found, however, no mud in any which 

 we have examined. The interior is rather neatly hned with fine grasses 

 and other soft materials, often with down from the cattails. The entrance 

 is through a small hole in one side which is usually inconspicuous. This 

 nest is swung among the reeds, grass, or cattails, usually over standing 

 water, but occasionally second nests are built in nearly dry situations 

 after the spring floods have subsided. In addition to the nest which 

 contains the eggs the birds build numbers of similar nests which apparently 

 are never occupied, or are occupied only for roosting purposes. It is a 

 common thing to find twenty to fifty such nests in an area of a few acres, 

 and the male is commonly believed to have constructed all these super- 

 numerary nests in order to mislead its enemies and prevent the discovery 

 of the occupied nests. However this may be, not one nest in twenty is 

 found to contain eggs or young, and the birds seem to continue building 

 as long as young remain in any of the nests. 



In the southern part of the state eggs are commonly laid about the first 

 week in June and a second set may be found in mid-July or occasionally as 

 late as the last of that month. They are five to eight in number and are so 

 heavily spotted with brown as to give them a dark mahogany or chocolate 

 color, entirely obscuring the ground color. They average .66 by .46 inches. 



The habits of this bird are familiar to everyone who has traversed dense 

 cattail swamps through which a boat has to be dragged or poled, the bird 

 and its song being characteristic features of these flooded lands. The 

 bird is continually rambling about among the grass stems, climbing to 

 the tops of the reeds and cattails, and occasionally fluttering a few yards 

 upward into the air, uttering his peculiar sputtering song and then dropping 

 back out of sight in the reeds. 



The song is very difficult of description, but is a mixture of scraping, 

 squeaking, bubbling and chattering notes, with a few more musical bars 

 which are certainly wren-like, but also mostly characteristic of this par- 

 ticular species. The bird probably excels all other members of the family 

 in the grotesque attitudes which it takes, frequently, throwing the tail 

 so far over the back, and the head so far toward the tail, that the tips 

 of the bill and tail almost meet. 



The food consists very largely of aquatic insects which creep up the 

 marshy vegetation as they transform from their larval condition, and are 

 easily secured by the bird. It also eats small Crustacea, as well as spiders, 

 caterpillars, and such other forms of minute animal life as abound in wet 

 places. It cannot be said that the consumption of such forms confers 

 any great benefit upon the agriculturist, but the bird undoubtedly does 

 its part toward restricting the undue increase of insects injurious to water 

 plants. 



The only injury which we have ever heard attributed to this bird is 

 the wilful destruction of the eggs of some swamp birds. Mr. Harold 

 Stewart and Mr. T. L. Hankinson have recorded the destruction of the 

 eggs of the Least Bittern, presumably by the Marsh Wren, which was 

 seen hovering around the nests, the eggs in those nests being found 

 punctured immediately afterward (Bull. Mich. Orn. Club, II, 1898, 18). 

 No explanation of this peculiar habit has been made. It seems possible 

 that the wren may pierce the eggs in order to take the contents as food; 

 but this is liardly likely. 



