20 EVERYDAY ADVENTURES 



some seventeen years ago, when I was laboriously 

 learning the birds. I was walking through a bit of 

 waste-land encircled by trolley-tracks when I heard 

 this same song. It was like nothing which I had 

 ever heard in New England, where I had learned 

 what little I knew about birds, and I searched every- 

 where for the singer, expecting to see a bird about 

 the size of a robin. 



Finally, in the underbrush just ahead of me, I 

 saw an unmistakable wren singing so ecstatically that 

 he shook and trembled all over with the outpouring 

 of his song. It was my first sight and hearing of 

 this southern bird, the Carolina wren, the largest of 

 our five wrens, whose field-mark is a long white 

 line over the eye. He is reddish-brown, while the 

 house wren, which is half an inch shorter, is cinna- 

 mon-brown. The long-billed marsh wren also has a 

 white line over the eye and is about the same size, 

 but is never found away from the tall grass bordering 

 on water, and has no such song as the Carolina. 

 The winter wren and the short-billed marsh wren 

 could neither of them be mistaken for the Carolina, 

 as both are about an inch and a half shorter and 

 lack the white line. The house wren and the long- 

 billed marsh wren bubble when they sing, the Caro- 

 lina wren and the winter wren ring, and the short- 

 billed marsh wren, the rarest of all, clicks. Of them 

 all only the Carolina wren sings in the winter. 



That day the wren-song brought me good luck. 

 It was no more than finished when I heard someone 

 passing along a nearby wood-road, who turned out 



