The House Wren 185 



ately do away with this objectionable feature by raising the floor. It is well to 

 keep this requirement in mind when making Wren boxes. A house 4x4x6 

 inches, with a sloping roof to shed water and an opening two inches from the 

 bottom, and not more than one inch in diameter, will not only meet all require- 

 ments but help to repulse the innocently pestilent English Sparrow. 



The six or eight purplish brown eggs, sometimes darker at the larger end, 

 in due course turn into little birds that require a deal of tending; and so rapid 

 is the process of digestion with these very warm-blooded animals that the excreta 

 is removed almost as fast at the food is supplied and, strangely enough, appears 

 to exceed the food in bulk; but then it must be remembered that the food is of 

 the most highly concentrated and nutritious animal matter. 



What a thrifty housewife Jenny is! Not a speck or splash is allowed to drop 

 near the dwelling, and often before the nestlings have actually taken wing, she 

 is varying her marketing trip by a hunt for dwelling number two. 



In searching the outbuilding sacred to tools and general litter to be " mended 

 some wet day," for the little bags of spider eggs that are so very appetizing to 

 mother bird as well as the children, Jenny spied an old stone jug that had gone 

 once too often wdth cider to the hayfield and come in contact with a rock. Badly 

 cracked but not broken, it was pushed back on the shelf, neck out. At once curious 

 and restless Jenny explored the short neck and, finding it much to her hking, 

 sent Johnny to collect twigs for filling the unnecessary space while she finished 

 preparing her youngsters to take wing, finding it convenient to leave an egg in 

 the new nest before she had quite shaken off the care of the first family. 



Whether the cider-jug home was too hot, or whether the mice with which the 

 tool house was filled became too inquisitive, this second home was abandoned 

 after a few days of incubation. On breaking the jug to see what had happened 

 to the eggs after the Wren had flown off to find new quarters for a third venture, 

 evidence pointed to the bird or birds having destroyed their own eggs in a fit of 

 temper or disgust at their surroundings. Each egg was perforated by a single 

 sharp thrust that could not have come from the teeth of a mouse, and the con- 

 tents of the egg had not been otherwise disturbed. 



Such a state of things I once practically saw happen under my very eyes, 

 though, lacking color distinction, I could not tell whether the male or female 

 was the egg-piercer. The nest was in a small house in the porch vine. One morn- 

 ing, a few days after incubation had begun, the return of one bird was heralded 

 by violent scolding on the part of the one sitting. Then both flew about lunging 

 at each other and fighting desperately. One bird, rather worsted, stopped to 

 rest, wings spread and panting, when immediately the other flew into the house 

 and proceeded to scratch and break the furniture. Then this one came out and 

 flew away. Next day neither appeared and I found the eggs pierced each with 

 a single thrust. 



The third nest that the old farm Wrens built was inside the north window- 

 blind of the best room of the farmhouse, a window seldom opened between 



