104 The Wilson Bulletin— No. 109 



house wren. I had never been able to obtain a breeding 

 bird of this species although two forms, Troglodytes aedon 

 aedon and T. a. parkmani (or, as we called it then, aztecus) , 

 were common during migrations. House wrens were re- 

 ported by ornithologists as breeding now and then in other 

 portions of the state and some few may have been present in 

 my region, but as a summer resident the bird was certainly 

 rare in the vicinity of Delavan. Now I found it, in July, 

 one of the most conspicuous and generally distributed of 

 town birds. It rivals the martin in popularity and every- 

 where I went were wren houses occupied by busy, singing 

 wrens. Such favorites indeed are the birds that I should 

 hesitate to be the collector of the desired series of breeding 

 examples for subspeciflc determination. I suspect that 

 both aedon and parkmani will now be found nesting within 

 the state. 



Purple martins have also increased in numbers. Mar- 

 tin houses are much more common than formerly, and no 

 one seems to have trouble in obtaining the desired tenants. 

 Sentiment in a bird's favor is the greatest help in its sur- 

 vival and increase in settled communities. 



The crested flycatcher has certainly greatly increased 

 in numbers as a breeding bird. In my collecting days at 

 Delavan I had to go to certain unfrequented woods to find 

 the great-crest, but now it is much more common ; I saw it 

 often in places it never used to inhabit, and it has actually 

 become a town bird. I also saw the wood pewee feeding 

 young in a nest on an oak limb over our own house, near the 

 city street; something I should have been much surprised 

 to note twenty years ago. Though always abundant in 

 that vicinity, the pewee was never suspected of being a city 

 dweller. Both the red-headed woodpecker and the yellow- 

 billed cuckoo are much more abundant and generally dis- 

 tributed than formerly, although both were common sum- 

 mer birds in my collecting days in Wisconsin. They are 

 now city birds also, and the red-head seemed one of the 

 most conspicuous birds of the country roadside. 



