86 NESTS AND EGGS OF BIRDS. 



with fine vegetable matters instead of with feathers. Mud is 

 not always a component part of the nest. 



These wrens begin nesting immediately upon their arrival, 

 which happens in the middle of May at Philadelphia, and 

 somewhat later northward. They rear two broods in a season, 

 constructing a new nest for the second. The time of nesting, 

 however, appears to be late and very irregular. 



The eggs are six to nine in number, oval or spheroidal in 

 form, .65 by .^o in dimensions, and of a rich dark chocolate 

 color resulting from an almost entire confluence of blotches. 

 Sometimes a lighter ground-color is smirched with the darker 

 pigment and some specimens have a washed-out appearance 

 with but few dark spots. Dr. Coues relates that "runts" 

 sometimes occur. "• Such are doubtless not fertilized, and 

 correspond to the little eggs that fowls and pigeons often drop 

 at the close of their season, indicating that their power is ex- 

 hausted. I have seen the same thing in the case of the barn 

 swallow, and it is probably not an infrequent occurrence." 



In favorable places west of the great plains, as about the 

 tule lakes in northern Utah, Variety paludicola, No. 51a, is 

 exceedingly numerous and closely resembles the eastern bird 

 in every particular. In southern Colorado, Henshaw found it 

 depositing its first eggs in the middle of June ; Ridgway took 

 them at Salt Lake June 2. Five was the largest number in any 

 one nest. 



52. THE SHORT-BILLED MARSH WREN. 

 CISTOTHORUS STELLARIS {Lichi.) Cab. 



Eastern United States breeding from Texas to Manitoba 

 and Massachusetts. It is nowhere common, however, and in 

 many large districts is never found. It is an inhabitant of low 

 fresh-water marshes and rank grass-plats. It is shy and its 

 home is hard to find. The nest reposes in the midst of a tus- 

 sock of coarse high grass, the tops of whicli are ingeniously 

 interwoven into a hollow globe with a small aperture in the 



