144 BULLETIN 195, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



Mo., 19 contained cast snakeskins, or about 63 percent of those 

 examined. 



Miss Maude Merritt (1916) gives an interesting list of material 

 which a male wren brought into a bird box and mixed with the usual 

 assortment of twigs: One hat pin, 1 buckle, 10 bits of chicken wire, 

 2 stays, 3 fasteners, 1 unidentified, 3 paper clips, 1 staple, 1 brass ring, 

 2 toilet wires, 6 collar stays, 2 oyster-bucket handles, part of a mouse 

 trap, 67 hair pins, 38 bits of wire, 5 safety pines, 3 steel pins, 22 nails, 

 and 3 brads. The female refused to accept the nest and departed; I 

 don't blame her. 



While we were studying birds at Lake Winnipegosis, Manitoba, my 

 companion, F. Seymour Hersey, watched a house wren carrying nest- 

 ing material through a knothole in a shed where it was building a nest. 

 She worked at it industriously; her time from leaving the nest until 

 returning with more sticks varied from 25 to 35 seconds, though once 

 she was gone a minute and 10 seconds. She had considerable difficulty 

 at times in forcing the twigs through the small hole. Often the twig 

 would drop from her bill, when she would pick it up and try again ; 

 one twig, about 8 inches long, was dropped and picked up five times 

 before she succeeded in getting it through the hole. He placed some 

 duck feathers near the hole, thinking she might use them, but she 

 carried them away and dropped them at some distance. 



Eggs. — The western house wren lays about the same number of eggs 

 as the eastern bird, and the two are similar in size, shape, and mark- 

 ings. The measurements of 40 eggs in the United States National 

 Museum average 16.3 by 12.6 millimeters ; the eggs showing the four 

 extremes measure 17.7 by 12.7, 17.3 by 13.3, 14.7 by 12.2, and 17.3 by 

 11.2 millimeters. 



Young. — Practically all that has been written about the young of 

 the eastern house wren would apply equally well to the western sub- 

 species, but there are a few items of interest that are worth adding 

 here. Mrs. Amelia S. Allen (1921) gives the following list of food 

 that was fed to a brood of eight young during a period of 1 hour, 

 10:20 to 11:20 a. m., on June 15, 1921, at Berkeley, Calif.: 5 lady- 

 bugs, 4 crane-flies, 5 large and 4 smaU beetles, 2 wireflies, 1 lacewing, 

 1 leafhopper, 5 crickets, 1 grasshopper, 1 butterfly, 1 moth, 1 milliped, 

 1 grub, and 1 unknown; there were 33 feedings, with an average in- 

 terval between feedings of 14 minutes and 32.7 seconds for each nest- 

 ling. 



Dr. J. G. Cooper (1876) tells a remarkable story of a pair of wrens, 

 with no other wrens within a quarter of a mile, that used the extra 

 nest, built by the male, to raise a second brood simultaneously with 

 the first ! As soon as the first nest was finished, the male began to 

 build another. "The female rarely assisted in this work, though I oc- 

 casionally saw both there, and in due time the second nest was fin- 



