Brown, Olive or Grayish Brown, and Brown and Gray Sparrowy Birds 



^\ed underbrush of the deep, cool woods. His presence there is 

 far more lil<ely to be detected by the ear than the eye. 



Throuj^hout the nesting season music fairly pours from his 

 tiny throat; it bubbles up like champagne: it gushes forth in a 

 lyrical torrent and overflows into every nook of the forest, that 

 seems entirely pervaded by his song. While music is every- 

 where, it apparently comes from no particular point, and, sea'xh 

 as you may, the tiny singer still eludes, exasperates, and yet 

 entrances. 



If by accident you discover him balancing on a swaying 

 twig, never far from the ground, with his comical little tail erect, 

 or more likely pointing towards his head, what a pert, saucy 

 minstrel he is ! You are lost in amazement that so much music 

 could come from a throat so tiny. 



Comparatively few of his admirers, however, hear the exqui- 

 site notes of this little brown wood-sprite, for after the nest- 

 ing season is over he tlnds little to call them forth during the 

 bleak, snowy winter months, when in the Middle and Southern 

 States he may properly be called a neighbor. Sharp hunger, 

 rather than natural boldness, drives him near the homes of men, 

 where he appears just as the house wren departs for the South. 

 With a forced confidence in man that is almost pathetic in a bird 

 that loves the forest as he does, he picks up whatever lies about 

 the house or barn in the shape of food — crumbs from the kitchen 

 door, a morsel from the dog's plate, a little seed in the barn-yard, 

 happily rewarded if he can tlnd a spider lurking in some sheltered 

 place to give a flavor to the unrelished grain. Now he becomes 

 almost tame, but we feel it is only because he must be. 



The spot that decided preference leads him to, either win- 

 ter or summer, is beside a bubbling spring. In the moss 

 that grows near it the nest is placed in early summer, nearly 

 always roofed over and entered from the side, in true wren-fash- 

 ion ; and as the young fledglings emerge from the creamy-white 

 eggs, almost the Hrst lesson they receive from their devoted little 

 parents is in the fine art of bathing. Fven in winter weather, 

 when the wren has to stand on a rim of ice, he will duck and 

 splash his diminutive body. 1*^ is recorded of a certain little 

 individual that he was wont to dive through the icy water on a 

 December day. Evidently the wrens, as a family, are not far 

 removed in the evolutionary scale from true water-birds. 



ii8 



