A Successful Failure 



By NORMAN McCLINTOCK. PittsburEh, Pa. 

 With photographs by the author 



NEXT to the much-despised English Sparrow, there is possibly no wild 

 bird that has become more domesticated or is better known than the 

 familiar little House Wren. Partly depending for protection, as he does, 

 upon the smallness of his size, with his consequent ability to squeeze through a 

 hole that will block his fighting English foe, the House Wren is able to hold 

 his own in the presence of that feathered ragamufhn. So it is that the House 

 Wren readily adapts himself to the little box which our loving hands may erect 

 for him close to our dwellings. I say "readily adapts," because I have always 

 read and heard that this is the common experience of bird-lovers. Not so mine, 

 however. 



I think it was about six \ears ago that the success of my friends with WVen 

 boxes, and the many printed references which I had seen at various times as 

 to the simplicity of erecting, in a suitable spot, any sort of a receptacle, from a 

 fancy and ingeniously designed box to an old tin can, with the assurance of 

 success, if the spot be within a Wren zone, led me to build a small house and 

 to placard it with signs reading, "To let, upon the easiest terms; inquire within." 

 At least, I intended the signs should read something like this in the Wren lan- 

 guage, but, as you will see, I must have made a serious blunder in my phraseology, 

 or in something else. 



My little box was very simply constructed from seasoned wood, with a hole 

 of regulation size in the regulation sjjot, and everything else made and placed 

 according to "Hoyle." The box was attached to a tree-trunk, about ten feet from 

 the ground, and was in place some time before the Wrens arrived from the South. 

 Since my childhood, not a few years ago, I have lived in the same place, in 

 a suburb of Pittsburgh; and I can not remember a season when a pair of Wrens 

 did not nest in an old orchard close by our house. To show, by way of a slight 

 digression, how every opinion depends upon the point of view, I will say that 

 this orchard was never pruned, and, as a consequence, was doubtless regarded 

 by Wrens as the best orchard in the neighborhood; although, for the very same 

 reason, a good horticulturist would have doubtless pronounced it the poorest 

 orchard for miles around. Every spring, the roUicking and bubbling song of 

 the male Wren could be heard all day long, day in and day out, through sunshine 

 and through rain, as only that little king of optimists can sing. 



Accordingly, I did not consider myself unreasonable to expect, especially 

 since this best and poorest of orchards had just been felled by the hand of ad- 

 vancing civilization, that my box would be occupied. It wasn't. However, late 

 in the nesting-season of that year, a male Wren visited the box daily for a time, 

 and even carried in straws and sticks. I couldn't understand why, for he appar- 

 ently had no mate; at least she never came near the box. 



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