Brown, Olive or Grayish Brown, and Brown and Gray Sparrowy Birds 
Long-billed Marsh Wren 
(Cistothorus palustris) Wren family 
Length—4.5 to 5.2 inches. Actually a little smaller than the Eng- 
lish sparrow. Apparently half the size. 
Male and Female—Brown above, with white line over the eye, 
and the back irregularly and faintly streaked with white. 
Wings and tail barred with darker cinnamon-brown. Un- 
derneath white. Sides dusky. Tail long and often carried 
erect. Bill extra long and slender. 
Range—United States and southern British America. 
Migrations—May. September. Summer resident. 
Sometimes when you are gathering cat-tails in the river 
marshes an alert, nervous little brown bird rises startled from the 
rushes and tries to elude you as with short, jerky flight it goes 
deeper and deeper into the marsh, where even the rubber boot 
may not follow. It closely resembles two other birds found in 
such a place, the swamp sparrow and the short-billed marsh 
wren; but you may know by its long, slender bill that it is not 
the latter, and by the absence of a bright bay crown that it is 
not the shyest of the sparrows. 
These marsh wrens appear to be especially partial to running 
water; their homes are not very far from brooks and rivers, 
preferably those that are affected in their rise and flow by the 
tides. They build in colonies, and might be called inveterate 
singers, for no single bird is often permitted to finish his bubbling 
song without half the colony joining in a chorus. 
Still another characteristic of this particularly interesting bird 
is its unique architectural effects produced with coarse grasses 
woven into globular form and suspended in the reeds. Some- 
times adapting its nest to the building material at hand, it weaves 
it of grasses and twigs, and suspends it from the limb of a bush 
or tree overhanging the water, where it swings like an oriole’s. 
The entrance to the nest is invariably on the side. 
More devoted homebodies than these little wrens are not 
among the feathered tribe. Once let the hand of man desecrate 
their nest, even before the tiny speckled eggs are deposited in it, 
and off go the birds to a more inaccessible place, where they can 
enjoy their home unmolested. Thus three or four nests may be 
made in a summer. 
119 
