i 2 Gbe Warbler 



of my first Wyoming season I became convinced; that the only possible way 

 for me to secure eggs of the Rock Wrens was to find such as might have 

 proven infertile, — and there seems not a few such, — in nests wherein the 

 hungry young should betray to me the home. Two such I actually found: 

 dainty, polished things, most delicately specked, like occasiDiial eggs ot 

 Winter Wren, Kinglet and Rocky Mountain Nuthatch, with faintest dots of 

 cinnamon. (It would be a matter of great satisfaction to learn the reason 

 for the prevalence of infertile eggs, with this Wren; and especially where 

 the eggs are few, as in Wyoming. Five is my maximum, of observed con- 

 ditions.) 



The nest-approaches, observed under the boulder-sheltered nests, were 

 usually of considerable length. It is impossible for a negative to image 

 these, in proper perspective; but the "side-walk" is something at least afoot 

 long. It is composed, mainly, of worn pebbles ranging up to an inch or a 

 little more, in diameter; and of sticks. The latter are sometimes really 

 many in number; and the mingling of wood and stone, beneath some slight- 

 ly uplifted slab of sand-rock, gives a well-nigh startling evidence of previous 

 occupancy. (Beneath one pot-hole, four feet above the ground at foot of a 

 high canyon wall, I found at least a quart of pebbles and short cedar and 

 sage sticks; a later finding, to be chronicled, presently, giving one the im- 

 pression that the presence of this material beneath the nest-hollow may not 

 have been wholly accidental. The nest in this pot-hole was largely made of 

 bark-shreds; while all other nests observed, without exception, were made 

 entirely of small roots.) 



No keener zest could possibly be found in any form of bird study than 

 in the tracing of their lares and penates of a pair of food-bearing Rock 

 Wrens. One catches, in such processes, an insight that seems fairly tele- 

 pathic into the mental processes of a parent bird. Fairly straining after in- 

 sight of this sort I once followed two Rock Wrens, by slow stages, rod by 

 rod up a most picturesque and rocky gorge. At the upper verge of this the 

 nesting place was finally found, and a fairy-like home it was. There was 

 a tiny stone castle; and the nursery nestled under the front piazza. The 

 children were playing among the little ferns, at the door-way; but scuttled 

 away to the inner recesses of the castle, far beyond the nursery, at the man's 

 approach. Something unusual in the appearance of these little creatures 

 prompted examination; and I was startled to find; that the body of every one, 

 from the smallest to that of the one three times its size, was nourishing great 

 grubs, fully a half-inch long, festering in sides, abdomens, heads ! These 

 disgusting parasites were carefully removed; but the youngest bird of all 

 succumbed to the shock. The rest all lived and matured: so far as later ob- 

 servations made apparent. It was a surprise to find no signs of any nestings 

 of the Rock Wren, in Wyoming; just as it had been a matter of wonder that 



