I>KI..\WARK VaLI.KY ORNITHOLOGICAL OLI'B. 15 



of Juno that the chocolate-colored eggs are laid and domestic 

 duties taken up in earnest. Even then these birds seem to 

 take it more as play than work. Could they be serious about 

 anything ? 



Wilson, speaking of the Marsh Wrens of Pennsylvania, says : 

 "The young leave the nest about the twentieth of June." 

 From my own observations this would seem to be an exception- 

 ally early date. I examined a great many nests along the 

 Pensauken Creek, N. J., on May thirtieth. None of them con- 

 tained eggs, and few were as yet completed. In a swamp at 

 Bristol, Peiina., on June nineteenth, Mr. Keim and I found 

 several nests. Two of them contained four and five eggs, re- 

 spectively. Examination proved these eggs to be well incu- 

 bated, but the}' certainly would not have hatched for several 

 days. 



Along the Pensauken Creek each patch of calamus has its pair 

 of Wrens, and each pair build, on an average four nests. In 

 this locality the globular nests are generally built among the 

 calamus stalks or in the crotch of an alder or elder bush. A 

 visit to these swamps, on May 30, 1904, showed each pair of 

 birds to have three nests almost completed, while the founda- 

 tions for a fourth were in most cases already started. They 

 seem to work on all of them at once. I watched a Wren with 

 a piece of building material in his bill. First he carried it to 

 one nest and started to stick it into that, then he flew away 

 with it to another nest and finally he inserted it into the walls 

 of the third, every little while stopping to sing a snatch of his 

 merry song. 



When among these swamps one is never beyond hearing of 

 the Wren's song. They seem to be fairlj' overflowing with 

 music — -a bubbling, gushing song that seems rather to have had 

 its birth above some rushing mountain stream than above these 

 sluggish waters. All da\' long thej' sing their cheery warble, 

 clinging to the stalk of some swamp plant with their little tails 

 cocked up over their backs in the most exaggerated Wren fash- 

 ion, or else mounting into the air with a burst of song and then 

 darting back again among the sheltering growth. Nor does the 

 coming of darkness silence them. 



