278 SINGING BIRDS. 



tship, Ush tship. In the early part of the breeding season the 

 male is very lively and musical, and in his best humor he tunes 

 up a Uship 'tship tship a dee, with a pleasantly warbled and 

 reiterated de. At a later period another male uttered little else 

 than a hoarse and guttural daigh, hardly louder than the croak- 

 ing of a frog. When approached, these birds repeatedly descend 

 into the grass, where they spend much of their time in quest of 

 insects, chiefly crustaceous, which with moths, constitute their 

 principal food ; here, unseen, they still sedulously utter their 

 quaint warbling, and tship tship a day day day day may for 

 about a month from their arrival be heard pleasantly echoing 

 on a fine morning from the borders of every low marsh and wet 

 meadow provided with tussocks of sedge-grass, in which they 

 indispensably dwell, for a time engaged in the cares and grati- 

 fication of raising and providing for their young. 



The nest of the Short-billed Marsh Wren is made wholly of 

 dry or partly green sedge, bent usually from the top of the 

 grassy tuft in which the fabric is situated. With much inge- 

 nuity and labor these simple materials are loosely entwined 

 together into a spherical form, with a small and rather obscure 

 entrance left in the side ; a thin lining is sometimes added to 

 the whole, of the linty fibres of the silk-weed or some other 

 similar material. The eggs, pure white and destitute of spots, 

 are probably from 6 to 8. In a nest containing 7 eggs there 

 were 3 of them larger than the rest and perfecdy fresh, while 

 the 4 smaller were far advanced towards hatching ; from this 

 circumstance we may fairly infer that tioo different individuals 

 had laid in the same nest, — a circumstance more common 

 among wild birds than is generally imagined. This is also the 

 more remarkable as the male of this species, like many other 

 Wrens, is much employed in making nests, of which not more 

 than one in three or four are ever occupied by the females. 



The summer limits of this species, confounded with the 

 ordinary Marsh-Wren, are yet unascertained ; and it is singu- 

 lar to remark how near it approaches to another species in- 

 habiting the temperate parts of the southern hemisphere in 

 America, namely, the Sylvia platensis, figured and indicated by 



