MARSH-WRENS. 89 



fore they are happy as they fitfully flit above the tall 

 weeds or clamber through them. To be appreciated, 

 these birds must be seen in just such spots as I have 

 named : neglected nooks, rankly overgrown, and daily 

 washed by the creeping tides — at times a widespread 

 lake, then a stretch of seething, slimy, bubbling mud. 

 I know not if it holds good elsewhere^ but as these wrens 

 have been observed along Crosswicks flats, I have never 

 seen one leave the reeds in which it was nesting and fly 

 half a dozen yards in any direction. They come to the 

 tops of the waving vegetation, twitter, and, closing their 

 wings, sink back into the cover. I have tried to drive 

 them from such clusters of weeds, but never succeeded. 

 They could be flushed easily, but never forced to leave 

 their chosen haunt. Wilson remarks of the long-billed 

 wren, it " arrives in Pennsylvania about the middle of 

 May, or as soon as the reeds and a species of nymphaea, 

 usually called splatter-docks, which grow in great luxu- 

 riance along the tide-water of our rivers, are sufiiciently 

 high to shelter it." 



This brings up a very interesting feature of bird mi- 

 gration. These wrens arrive very irregularly, but in 

 accordance with the season. They require a given con- 

 dition of aquatic vegetation, and when that obtains these 

 birds appear in and about it. It is, indeed, scarcely to 

 be wondered that the crude idea of the hibernation of 

 birds should have arisen. It is apparently true of the 

 marsh- wrens, yet I believe they have escaped the charge. 

 In the past eleven years, the reeds and other water-plants 

 have been moderately grown as early as April 15, and 

 often not earlier than May 10, and these birds have 



