150 THE NESTS AND EGGS OF BRITISH BIRDS. 

 Family TROGLODYTID^:. Genus TROGLODYTES. 



COMMON WREN. 



TROGLODYTES PARVULUS, Koch. 

 Double Brooded. Laying season, April to June. 



BRITISH BREEDING AREA: The Common Wren is 

 very widely and generally distributed throughout the 

 British Islands, even extending to the Outer Hebrides 

 (but not to St. Kilda), to the Orkneys and the Shetlands. 

 It is of course much more abundant in the lowland, 

 well-cultivated districts than in the more upland, treeless 

 wilds. 



BREEDING HABITS : The Wren is everywhere a resident 

 in our islands. Its haunts are varied in the extreme, 

 from the farmyard and the garden round the homestead 

 to the bare, treeless wilderness of the crofter's cottage or 

 the Irish bothy. It frequents woods, plantations, coppices, 

 spinneys, and shrubberies just as much as thickets, the 

 brushwood on the banks of streams, sunk fences, ditches, 

 hedgerows, and the rough broken ground clothed with 

 gorse and bramble and fern near the moors, and even 

 the long ling and heath on those wide wastes. The 

 Wren pairs annually in some cases, and rather early in 

 spring, although it is not improbable that many birds 

 are united for life, and yearly breed in one spot. It is 

 not at all a social species, each pair keeping to a par- 

 ticular haunt, and as soon as the breeding season is over 

 is most often met with solitary and alone. The nest is 

 a charming little structure, globular in shape, with a 

 small hole in the front, often near the top, and frequently, 

 when in bushes, on the side. It is built in a great variety 

 of situations in thick bushes of all kinds, in brambles 

 and amongst ivy, in the sides of haystacks, and frequently 



