WRENS. 
Long-billed A far more musical bird than his short- 
Marsh Wren billed relative, the Long-billed Marsh Wren, 
Telmatodytes Z Z 
a letris an inhabitant of the salt marshes from 
L.5.20inches Staten Island and Long Island to Massa- 
May 15th chusetts, is also one of the sweetest songsters 
of the Hudson River valley, the shores of the central lakes of 
New York, Lake Ontario and Erie, and the borders of the 
Niagara River. A few individuals remain throughout the 
winter in the valley of the Hudson and along the coast. 
The range of the Long-billed Marsh Wren is from southern 
Ontario to Massachusetts south to the Potomac River and 
the coast of Virginia; it winters from the south Atlantic 
and Gulf States to eastern Mexico. The nest is like 
that of its short-billed relative, and is firmly attached to 
the stalks of cat-tails which sustain it. The male bird 
with unaccountable industry continues to build fresh nests 
after the egg-laying of its mate has begun in the first nest. 
W. E. D. Scott writes that he found eight new nests in a 
small swamp of forty by twenty-five feet occupied exclu- 
sively by asingle pair of Wrens and that these were all built 
in ten successive days! Egg, a uniform light umber brown 
flecked with darker brown at the larger end, .or, some- 
times a white ground shows through a profuse spotting of 
dark brown. 
This Wren sings, at intervals, all day long and quite 
frequently in the night. The song is delivered often from 
the unsteady perch of a swinging cat-tail, and with the 
nervous haste characteristic of the Wren family. It 
ripples and bubbles along in a fashion similar to that of 
the Winter or the House Wren, but with a glassy tinkle in 
tone not characteristic of the songs of the other species and 
a tempo perceptibly more rapid than that of the House 
Wren’s music, thus: 
Twice Oren OC enn 
Presto. A ie + } a $ 
Gomme bos ea 
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TAY 
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223 
