OUR WESTERN WRENS. 135 



near human dwellings have learned to do so more 

 from necessity than from choice. We have culti- 

 vated the meadows and hills, and cut down the 

 forests, and cleared out the marshes, until the birds 

 which once lived in these places were driven away. 

 They were obliged to make our acquaintance and 

 live with us, or be crowded into the sea or to the 

 bleak mountains. 



Our wrens have still their native wilds in the 

 West, but by and by, when we have cultivated all 

 the land, they will, no doubt, come and live with 

 us and change their habits to suit. We shall 

 have them in our woodsheds and balconies, and 

 they will accept the little boxes we shall put up 

 for their nests. Now and then we do see some of 

 the wrens in our garden, in winter-time, searching 

 about the tree's and shrubbery with their cousins 

 the titmice and chicadees and bush-tits. It seems 

 as if they are looking the ground over to see how 

 they will like it when the time comes for them to 

 stay. We shall all be glad to see them, with their 

 lively ways and pretty songs. 



Perhaps the most interesting wren we have 

 with us all the year round, in parts of the South- 

 west, is the cactus-wren. It is so named on ac- 

 count of its preference for the dry, desert-like 

 arroyos and washes, where hardly any plant grows 



