TliLiL Feathered Midget of Our Tide-Water Swamps — 

 The Long- Billed Marsh Wren 



BY CHRESWELL J. HUNT 



The Long-billed Marsh Wren ( Tclmatodytes palustrw) is a 

 CDininon summer resident throughout the Delaware Valley 

 wiierever suitable swamps are to be found, hut is rarely found 

 above the reach of tide-water. 



Mr. Thomas H. Jackson found tlicm breeding in a swamp 

 along the Brandywine Creek near Lenape, Chester County, 

 Pennsylvania, in ISSfi; and Mr. Witmer Stone found them in 

 considerable numbers along the Egg Harbor River above May's 

 Lauding, New Jersey, quite a distance above tide-water. 

 These are the farthest records above tide-water that have come 

 to my notice. 



In some parts of New Jersey it appears to be a resident 

 species, as Messrs. Stone and S. N. Rhoads found small num- 

 bers of them in the giant cattail swamps at Cape May in Janu- 

 ary, and Mr. Charles H. Rogers, of New York City, records 

 Marsh Wrens at Moresmere, Bergen Count}', N. J., as late as 

 November twenty-first. ["Bird-Lore," Vol. VI, No. 3, 

 page 98.] 



My own studies of the bird have been made along the tide- 

 water creeks which empty into the Delaware River near Phila- 

 delphia. These creeks have high and wooded banks on one 

 side, while on the other side for the most part lie low stretches 

 of alder swamps, covered during the summer with a rank 

 growth of spatter-dock, calamus, wild rice, and pickerel-weed, 

 with here and there a clump of rose-mallow or a gorgeous car- 

 dinal flower. It is here that countless numbers of these little 

 birds find a congenial summer home. 



They arrive about the tenth of May, and although thej' Vie- 

 gin nest-building early, it is not until the first and second weeks 



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