The Carolina Wren .169 



the mantel of a deserted negro cabin, in a broken gourd carelessly tossed 

 on a grape arbor, and in a cap hanging against the lattice wall of an 

 outhouse. 



In a country place near Philadelphia, a pair of Carolina Wrens entered the 

 sitting-room through a window that was left partly open, and built their 

 nest in the back of an upholstered sofa, entering where a hole had been torn 

 in the back. Needless to say, they were not disturbed, and were given full 

 possession until the young were safely reared. Not far away, a brood raised 

 near the house came back, night after night, to roost in a rolled-up Japanese 

 screen hanging on the porch. 



As a rule, however, the Carolina Wren is distinctly a bird of the wilder 

 wooded spots, usually in the immediate vicinity of some small stream or river 

 shore, for water seems to have a peculiar attraction for him. 



The food of the Carolina Wren consists wholly of insects of various kinds — 

 caterpillars, beetles, etc., and, like all of its tribe, it is an exceedingly beneficial 

 bird, fully meriting the protection that is usually accorded to Wrens by all 

 save the house cat, who is their mortal enemy. 



I was dehghted, one day several years ago, to hear a subdued song appar- 

 ently coming from my small city yard. I thought at first that some neighbor 

 had a caged Cardinal, but, upon investigating, found a Carolina Wren exploring 

 my wild-fiower bed, and occasionally indulging in a subdued whisper-song. 

 All day long I tried to protect him from the cats, which were intent upon 

 "stalking" him from the neighboring yards, but which were kept off to a great 

 extent by my chicken-wire addition to the fences. I trust that he departed 

 in safety, though I know that the cats, a few days previously, deprived a 

 visiting House Wren of his tail, and rendered him so strikingly like the 

 Winter Wren that I fear he may have proved the subject of an unusual record 

 of the latter species. 



The Carolina Wren occurs throughout the lowland of the 

 Distribution southern states, north to the upper limits of the CaroHnian Life 

 Zone, regularly to southeastern Pennsylvania and southern New 

 Jersey, and west of the Alleghanies to southwestern Pennsylvania, central 

 Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, and west to southern Iowa, Kansas and Texas. It 

 occurs casually north to southern New England, Michigan, and Minnesota. 



While of regular occurence about Philadelphia, it is to some extent local, 

 and not so abundant or universally distributed as along the broader valley of 

 the Susquehanna, a little farther to the westward. That is the region par- 

 ticularly associated in my mind with the Carolina Wren in summer, just as 

 the low swamps of New Jersey stand out as his winter quarters: the broad 

 river rushing along among its rocks and islands, the high wooded hills rising 

 from either bank, cut with innumerable rocky ravines, the summer sun light- 

 ing up the whole landscape, and floating up from every side the clear, far- 

 reaching notes of the Carohna Wren. 



