WRENS. 



Long- billed 

 Marsh Wren 



Telmatodytes 

 palustris 

 L. 5.20 Inches 

 May isth 



A far more musical bird than his short - 

 billed relative, the Long-billed Marsh Wren, 

 an inhabitant of the salt marshes from 

 Staten Island and Long Island to Massa- 

 chusetts, is also one of the sweetest songsters 

 of the Hudson River valley, the shores of the central lakes of 

 New York, Lake Ontario and Erie, and the borders of the 

 Niagara River. A fe\v individuals remain throughout the 

 winter in the valley of the Hudson and along the coast. 

 The range of the Long-billed Marsh Wren is from southern 

 Ontario to Massachusetts south to the Potomac River and 

 the coast of Virginia; it winters from the south Atlantic 

 and Gulf States to eastern Mexico. The nest is like 

 that of its short-billed relative, and is firmly attached to 

 the stalks of cat-tails which sustain it. The male bird 

 with unaccountable industry continues to build fresh nests 

 after the egg-laying of its mate has begun in the first nest. 

 W. E. D. Scott writes that he found eight new nests in a 

 small swamp of forty by twenty-five feet occupied exclu- 

 sively by a single pair of Wrens and that these were all built 

 in ten successive days! Egg, a uniform light umber brown 

 flecked with darker brown at the larger end, or, some- 

 times a white ground shows through a profuse spotting of 

 dark brown. 



This Wren sings, at intervals, all day long and quite 

 frequently in the night. The song is delivered often from 

 the unsteady perch of a swinging cat-tail, and with the 

 nervous haste characteristic of the Wren family. It 

 ripples and bubbles along in a fashion similar to that of 

 the Winter or the House Wren, but with a glassy tinkle in 

 tone not characteristic of the songs of the other species and 

 a tempo perceptibly more rapid than that of the House 

 Wren's music, thus : 



Presto. 



223 



