House Wren. 57 



and cavities in buildings, boxes, tree-trunks, stumps, and' 

 fence posts. They often pile their trashy material be- 

 tween a window-sash and the blinds, entering between the 

 shutters. I knew a pair to make a nest in an old tea-pot, 

 which hung against the side of a house, under a large 

 porch. For several years a cavity between the window- 

 frame and the brick wall, in the upper story of a public 

 school building, was transformed into a convenient home 

 for a family of wrens, the entrance being too small to ad- 

 mit the sparrows, which frequently essayed to take pos- 

 session. A pair of wrens once laid claim to an empty shot 

 sack hanging under a porch of a farm-house, and refused 

 to be dispossessed, even after their work had been thrown 

 out twice by the farmer's wife. They finally reared a 

 brood in the third nest made in this odd site. Another 

 pair of wrens found an opening into a bag of feathers 

 hanging in a porch, and in this downy retreat reared a 

 brood before the owner discovered the intrusion. 



Cavities about porches, mortise holes in beams of barns 

 and out-buildings, and knot-holes in orchard trees — in 

 fact, any nook whose entrance will not admit the house 

 sparrows that might attempt to take up a prior claim — 

 may be chosen by the wrens, and filled with dry twigs, 

 feathers, gossamer, and dried grass, with feathers for 

 lining. Their spirit of incessant activity prompts them to 

 fill other cavities near their homes with dry sticks. A 

 pair of wrens will take possession of several boxes put up 

 for the use of these birds, and will spend some time in 

 lugging into each of them twigs and feathers, though only 

 one nest will be finished and occupied. Some careful ob- 

 servers of bird ways aver that the male continues to carry 

 sticks into cavities after the female begins to incubate, and 

 thus he has several nests in process of construction. A 

 naturalist friend of mine, however, who seldom makes a 

 mistake in observation, asserts that the male begins sev- 

 eral nests in different sites; and when proposing to his 

 fair one, he invites her to inspect his different properties; 

 and if any of them pleases her fancy, she accepts his pro- 

 posal, and the pair take up housekeeping in the favored 

 location. 



The complement of eggs varies from six to nine. The 



