152 BULLETIN 195, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



I think it is peculiar to the young as the tree-e-e- certainly is. An old 

 bird with this brood called tick^ tick.'''' 



Perley M. Silloway (1923) says of the behavior of the young: "It 

 is interesting to watch these youngsters when disturbed. They scatter 

 like young Bob- whites, some crouching in the sparse ground cover, 

 while others may seek higher shelter. One was noticed clinging to the 

 bare bark near the base of a large tree, like a growth on the bark, silent 

 and watchful, seeking to avoid detection while the adults were scolding 

 forcibly under cover near by and trying to draw the brood from the 

 threatened danger." 



Miss Stanwood has sent me some very elaborate notes, based on her 

 extensive observations on two nests of the winter wren, from which 

 the following information has been gleaned. Apparently the male 

 takes no part in building the nest, in incubating the eggs, or in feeding 

 the young while they are in the nest, though he encourages his mate 

 by singing his most glorious songs in the immediate vicinity. He 

 frequently approaches the nest in full song, calls the female off the 

 nest and feeds her ; he may, also, occasionally feed her while she is on 

 the nest. He, apparently, assists in the care of the young after they 

 leave the nest and while the family keeps together for some time. 



The female feeds the young at frequent intervals ; a large number 

 of observations indicate that the young are usually fed at intervals 

 varying from 2 to 5 minutes but often as frequently as once a minute ; 

 rarely the intervals between feedings were as much as 10 or 15 minutes. 

 The feedings continue from dawn to dusk but are most frequent during 

 the early morning hours. The food given to the young, as far as could 

 be determined, consisted of moths, including spruce-bud moths and 

 tan geometrid moths, craneflies, cutworms, caterpillars of various 

 kinds, numerous small insects, and spiders. The female removes the 

 fecal sacs as often as necessary, until the young are large enough to 

 back up to the nest entrance and shoot their excrement over the edge. 

 She broods the small young occasionally for periods of 2 or 3 minutes. 



At one nest the young left when they were about 19 days old. "They 

 had a soft, abrupt zee food call, which was very pretty and uttered con- 

 stantly." They traveled about in a loose family party, often passing 

 close to the observer but paying no attention to her. 



Plumages. — The natal down, with which the nestling is only scantily 

 covered on the dorsal feather tracts, is between "drab" and "hair 

 brown" ; in a young bird, about half grown, that I took from the nest 

 referred to above, the last of this down still persists on the crown, where 

 it is more than a quarter of an inch long. On this bird the juvenal 

 plumage was well out, on the dorsal and ventral tracts ; on the former 

 it is "russet," barred with dusky, on the flanks "sayal brown," and on the 

 breast pale buff, barred or mottled with dusky ; the wing feathers were 

 just beginning to break their sheaths. Dwight's (1900) description of 



