282 THE WINTER WREN. 



compass, I finally discover the singer. He is perched on a 

 small dry limb of a cedar a few feet from the ground. The 

 volume and tone of the song lead me to expect a bird at 

 least as large as a Thrash, but lo, he is one of the most di- 

 minutive of the feathered tribes the Winter Wren ! I can- 

 not be mistaken, for quite near and in full view, his short 

 tail thrown forward and his head partially raised, I can see 

 his breast swell and tremble while he several times repeats 

 his song. About 4.00 long, and thus about a half inch 

 shorter than the Common or House Wren, and of the same 

 reddish-brown waved with darker, the Winter Wren (Anor- 

 thura troglodytes var. hyemalis] is to be distinguished by his 

 much shorter tail, and his white or whitish markings on the 

 sides of the head and on the primaries. But one does well 

 to make out this much while the bird is "in the bush ;" so 

 diminutive, so nearly the color of dried bark and leaves, 

 and dodging in and out of rock-crevices, brush heaps and 

 bushes with the ease and rapidity of a mouse, it will be 

 necessary, in most cases, to obtain the bird " in the hand " 

 in order to identify it. 



Though this species may be heard occasionally in the 

 cool cedar groves of Tonawanda Swamp throughout the 

 breeding season, I have not been one of the very few fortu- 

 nate enough to find its nest. Audubon found two nests. 

 One was in the pine woods of Pennsylvania, near Mauch 

 Chunk, on the lower part of the trunk of a tree, "a pro- 

 tuberance covered with moss and lichens, resembling those 

 excrescences which are often seen on our forest trees, with 

 this difference, that the aperture was perfectly rounded, 

 clean, and quite smooth. * * * Externally, it measured 

 seven inches in length, four and a half in breadth; the 

 thickness of its walls, composed of moss and lichens, was 

 nearly two inches; and thus it presented internally the 



