HOUSE WREN. 269 



forsook the nest after entering, and never laid in it. But still 

 the happy warbler continued his uninterrupted lay, apparently 

 in solitude. 



The song of our familiar Wren is loud, sprightly, and tremu- 

 lous, uttered with peculiar animation, and rapidly repeated ; at 

 first the voice seems ventriloquial and distant, and then bursts 

 forth by efforts into a mellow and echoing w^arble. The trill- 

 ing, hurried notes seem to reverberate from the leafy branches 

 in which the musician sits obscured, or are heard from the low 

 roof of the vine-mantled cottage like the shrill and unwearied 

 pipe of some sylvan elf. The strain is continued even during 

 the sultry noon of the summer's day, when most of the feath- 

 ered songsters seek repose and shelter from the heat. His 

 lively and querulous ditty is, however, still accompanied by 

 the slower-measured, pathetic chant of the Red-eyed Fly- 

 catcher, the meandering, tender warble of the Musical Vireo, 

 or the occasional loud mimicry of the Catbird; the whole 

 forming an aerial, almost celestial concert, which never tires 

 the ear. Though the general performance of our Wren bears 

 no inconsiderable resemblance to that of the European species, 

 yet his voice is louder, and his execution much more varied and 

 delightful. He is rather a bold and insolent intruder upon those 

 birds who reside near him or claim the same accommodation. 

 He frequently causes the mild Bluebird or the Martin to relin- 

 quish their hereditary claims to the garden box, and has been 

 accused also of sucking their eggs. Nor is he any better con- 

 tented with neighbors of his own fraternity who settle near him, 

 keeping up frequent squabbles, like other little busybodies, 

 who are never happy but in mischief; so that upon the whole, 

 though we may justly admire the fine talents of this petulant 

 domestic, he is, like many other actors, merely a good per- 

 former. He is still upon the whole a real friend to the farmer 

 and horticulturist, by the number of injurious insects and their 

 destructive lar\^3e on which both he and his numerous family 

 subsist. Bold and fearless, seeking out every advantageous 

 association, and making up in activity what he may lack in 

 strength, he does not confine his visits to the cottage or the 



