202 Bird - Lore 



three short notes always fills me with a homesick longing, and the years when I 

 could not hear him have been many. 



For days my Wren sang and labored on without a mate. When he absented 

 himself for some time, I wondered if he had gone to Florida to fetch her, and 

 whether, when she came (for the Wren's faith was contagious and I never doubted 

 she would come), she would like the cup house. I had heard instances of the bride 

 flouting the home prepared for her by her little mate and utterly refusing it, 

 whether out of pure coquetry or obstinacy, or for good and sufficient reasons 

 which she saw and he did not. Years ago I nailed up in a pine tree a shallow 

 cigar-box in which a small hole was bored, and a male Wren at once began to 

 build in it. The female refused it, and I considered her the more sensible of the 

 two. 



If the Wren of my porch in his absence had been South, he returned alone and 

 sang on as cheerfully as ever. Dick, our canary, hung in the porch and the Wren 

 often alighted on his cage to sing his bubbling song, perhaps taunting the caged 

 bird on his imprisonment. 



When at last the expected one arrived, it was a question in my mind, whether 

 the bright silvery house provided attracted her, or the song of the preserving bird 

 whose patience was now rewarded. I wondered, too, if it were his mate of last 

 year or only a casual traveler who came. How could one find out ? We know the 

 ostrich mates for life, but I proved by my summer study that this is not true of 

 the Wren. Very soon there was a tiny chocolate-colored egg in the nest. One 

 could see it by lifting up the door, though the nest was in the farthest corner on 

 the top of a pile of twigs that almost filled the cup. This was on the first day 

 of July. There were then no decorations to the nest. On the fourth, when the 

 shingle-door was lifted, the little bird flew out through the little hole with a sad 

 little peep, the only sound she had been heard to make. If she only could have 

 sat still for a minute in her dainty bower! Surrounding her were speckled hen's 

 feathers each standing on its point, which was somehow woven into the nest, 

 each feather being so placed as to curve over the nest. It was beautifully artistic 

 (I feel as though every word of this sentence should be in italics), and may 

 have been arranged by her mate while she sat on the nest, for she just fitted 

 into her bower. 



Do Wrens always build so daintily? I put this question to my neighbor, 

 whose Wren's nest in nailed-up flower-pots and she answered carelessly that they 

 always do. I doubted whether she gave thought enough to my question to answer 

 properly, for, when the nest-box is in something you cannot open, how do you 

 know what is inside ? If I had put up a plant-crock for a bird-house, I should 

 never have seen this remarkable decoration. On July 5, there were five eggs 

 in the nest. 



The birds seemed to get their entire living out of an adjacent pine tree, among 

 whose needles were plenty of small insects. When they found an unusually large 

 one, they flew down onto the gravel driveway, to master it. It was a bad habit. The 



