THE WREN. 



THE Wren is one of the smallest birds known in 

 Britain. But though small, we can seldom pass him by 

 as he creeps up the fences and under the tangled vege- 

 tation, trilling forth music, both loud and sweet, or utter- 

 ing his long string of startling call notes. Though a 

 soft-billed or insect-feeding bird, Nature has not intended 

 him to be a wanderer, and he remains with us throughout 

 the year. He knows not the barren moor or common, 

 so dear to the Grouse and Plover, but, a lover of arboreal 

 seclusion, we find him in the densest woods, the shrub- 

 beries, the fields, the hedgerows, the lanes, and sunken 

 fences ; so too about heaps of old timber or brushwood, 

 in gardens, and on the wooded banks of rivers and 

 streams. 



We may justly call this little creature a perennial 

 songster, one of the three or four that warble incessantly, 

 except in the moulting season, summer and winter alike. 



