HOUSE WREN 



whisper, like some of the thrush notes which prelude and close 

 their high strains delivered with wide beaks. 



Wrens are troglodytae, and so sing much like Mockingbirds, 

 Thrushes and Cat-birds, the difference being that all these deliver 

 their melody in measures. The song of the Wren resembles that 

 of the others of the species in a degree, but it knows no measure ; 

 it is a bubbling outpouring too difficult to record ; I judge from 

 the fact that I never have seen any records. It is even more 

 liquid and fluent than that of the Bobolink, which has been well 

 reproduced by several bird musicians. The music has no high 

 rating as melody, the prepossessing thing about it being that it is 

 so constantly and so happily delivered. A season at the Cabin 

 without the music of a Wren would be my "Hamlet with Hamlet 

 left out." 



Because it is mercenary, and I am not, I put their benefit to 

 man last. Consider this one pair, having eleven mouths in the 

 family, carrying one unceasing stream of worms, spiders, grass- 

 hoppers, from first peep of day to dark night, and then try to 

 estimate what their presence means on your arbour, or in your 

 garden, or among your fruit trees. In feeding they do not re- 

 gurgitate. The young take the insects as gathered with the 

 stripping of wings and the largest legs of grasshoppers, and the 

 peeling of the hardest outer wings of beetles. All food I ever have 

 seen taken was living, while they covered the widest range of 

 worms and insects I ever knew one pair of birds to use; and the 

 very largest for their size, as I think you will agree from these 

 pictures of my Wrens, and those I made at Bob's house which are 

 the birds of the oblong box. 



Bob had placed his box on a very high pole, so that it would be 

 out of the reach of cats. W T hen the affairs of his Wren family 

 were engrossing, he became so interested he asked me to come and 

 take their pictures. They were quite as attractive as he thought 



223 



