EASTERN WINTER WREN 153 



a bird in full juvenal plumage is similar, but he adds : "Wings darker 

 and tail ruddier, both duskily barred, alternating on the outer prima- 

 ries with pale butf, the coverts with whitish terminal dots. * * * 

 Flanks and crissum deep russet. Orbital ring and faint superciliary 

 line dull buff." 



A partial postjuvenal molt occurs, beginning about the middle of 

 August, involving the contour plumage and the wing coverts, but not 

 the rest of the wings or the tail ; in the first winter plumage adults and 

 young are practically indistinguishable. Adults have a complete post- 

 nuptial molt in August but apparently no spring molt. The sexes are 

 alike in all plumages. 



Food. — The winter wren is almost wholly insectivorous, and it is 

 especially useful in consuming many of the woodland insects and their 

 larvae which are more or less injurious to our forests. W. L. McAtee 

 (1926a) writes: "Vegetable food is of practically no interest to the 

 winter wren ; the bird wants flesh and its choice of meat most commonly 

 strikes upon such creatures as the beetles, true bugs, spiders, cater- 

 pillars, and ants and other small hymenoptera. By contrast grass- 

 hoppers, crickets, crane flies, moths, millipeds, and snails are minor 

 items of food, and dragon flies, daddy-longlegs, mites, pseudoscorpions, 

 and sowbugs are merely tasted. Forest insects consumed are bark 

 beetles and other weevils, round-headed wood borers, leaf beetles, leaf 

 hoppers, plant lice, lace bugs, ants, sawflies, and caterpillars." 



Arthur H. Howell (1924) says that, in the South, "the bird has been 

 known to capture boll weevils." And E. H. Forbush ( 1929 ) writes : 

 "The winter wren feeds along the banks of streams, frequently pecking 

 at something in the water, and sometimes in its eagerness to secure its 

 prey, it immerses the whole head. It may thus secure water insects. 

 Miss Mabel E. Wiggins informed me that at East Marion, Long Island, 

 N. y., on October 20, 1918, winter wrens were feeding on the berries of 

 the Virginia juniper or red cedar." 



Beluwior. — The winter wren is a secretive little mite, the smallest 

 of our wrens with the exception of the short-billed marsh wren. Be- 

 cause of its retiring habits, it is often overlooked and is probably more 

 common than most of us realize, for it does not advertise itself in the 

 tree tops or pose to pour out its delicious song from some conspicuous 

 perch as so many songsters do. We must look for it, if we would 

 find it, in its lowly retreats near the ground, in the tangles along 

 old stone walls, in the brush piles, and about fallen trees, prostrate 

 logs, and wood piles. But it is really not shy and often quite indif- 

 ferent to human presence. If we sit or stand quite still near its re- 

 treat, we may see it hop up to some twig near us, perhaps within a 

 few feet of us, bobbing or bouncing up and down, flirting its short 

 tail, and eyeing us inquisitively, but fearlessly. Edward J. F. Marx 

 (1916) tells of one that actually alighted on the side of his coat while 



