182 Contributions from the Charleston Museum. 



in number, are usually deposited by May 9, and are greenish white 

 or bluisli white, very thickly speckled or sprinkled with reddish 

 brown, and measure 1.08X.80. 



The Brown Thrasher is more abundant in autumn and winter 

 than in the breeding season, since the birds that breed to the 

 northward of South Carolina appear in large numbers during 

 the first cold spell in October. 



FAMILY TROGLODYTIDiE: WRENS. 



284. Thryothorus ludovicianus (Lath.). Carolina Wren. 



The Carolina W>en is exceedingly abundant throughout the 

 entire state. It is a permanent resident and breeds commonly 

 on wooded land, and also sparingly in the city of Charleston. It 

 is a very early breeder. I found a nest containing five eggs on 

 April 4, 1908, and upon visiting the nest again on the 8th found 

 it contained six eggs. The last egg was laid on the 5th, which 

 is my earliest breeding record. Three broods are annually reared 

 as is proven by the following records: May 5, 1884, Otranto, 

 three fresh eggs, set incomplete; May 10, 1884, Charleston, five 

 fresh eggs; May 15, 1902, Christ Church Parish, six fresh eggs; 

 July 11, 1902, Christ Church Parish, five fresh eggs; June 6, 1890, 

 McPhersonville, five fresh eggs. 



The nest, which is constructed of grass, leaves, moss, and snake 

 skins, and lined with hair or the dead threads of the Spanish 

 moss, is placed in all sorts of situations, such as barns, stables, 

 poultry houses, holes of trees, partially closed palmetto leaves, 

 tin cans in buildings, thick bushes, on the ground at the foot of 

 thick bushes, and in wooden boxes nailed to trees. At McPher- 

 sonville, on May 6, 1890, I collected a nest and four slightly in- 

 cubated eggs. The nest was placed in a hole in a bank and 

 within a foot of a flood-gate. As a pair of Water-Thrushes 

 (Seiurus motacillal) were seen for several days within a few feet 

 of the nest I naturally supposed that it belonged to them and 

 hoped to establish a record of their breeding. I visited the nest 

 several times during the course of three or four days in order to 

 identify its owners, but despite all my care in approaching it, 

 the sitting bird eluded me until late one afternoon when I dis- 

 covered it on the nest and it proved to be the Carolina Wren. 

 This set of eggs is in the collection of Mr. R. P. Sharpies, and while 

 several oologists have pronounced them to belong to the Louis- 



