428 NUTTALL'S SHORT-BILLED MARSH WREN. 



is also sometimes a low hoai'se and scolding daigh, daigh. Then again 

 on invading the nest, the sound sinks to a plaintive tsh, tship, tsh, tship. 

 In the early part of the breeding season, the male is very lively and 

 musical, and in his best humour he tunes up a tship, tship, tship, a dee, 

 with a pleasantly warbled and reiterated de. At a later period, another 

 male uttered little else than a hoarse and guttural daigh, hardly louder 

 than the croaking of a frog. When approached, they repeatedly descend 

 into the grass, where they spend much of their time, in quest of insects, 

 chiefly crustaceous, which, with moths, constitute their principal food. 

 Here unseen they still sedulously utter their quaint warbling ; and tship, 

 tship, a day, day, day, day, may, for about a month from their arrival, 

 be heard pleasantly echoing on a fine morning, from the borders of every 

 low marsh and wet meadow, provided with tussocks of sedge grass, in 

 which they indispensably dwell, for a time engaged in the cares and gra- 

 tification of raising and providing for their young. 



" The nest of the Short-billed Marsh Wren is made wholly of dry or 

 partly green sedge, bent usually from the top of the grassy tuft in which 

 the fabric is situated. With much ingenuity and labour these simple 

 materials are loosely entwined together into a spherical form, with a small 

 and rather obscure entrance left on the side. A thin lining is sometimes 

 added to the whole, of the linty fibres of the silk-weed, or some other 

 similar material. The eggs, pure white, and destitute of spots, are pro- 

 bably from six to eight. In a nest containing seven eggs, there were 

 three of them larger than the rest, and perfectly fresh, while the four 

 smaller were far advanced towards hatching. From this circumstance we 

 may fairly infer that two different individuals had laid in the same nest, a 

 circumstance more common among wild birds than is generally imagined. 

 This is also the more remarkable, as the male of this species, like many 

 other Wrens, is much employed in making nests, of which not more than 

 one in three or four are ever occupied by the females ! 



" The summer limits of this species, confounded Avith the ordinary 

 Marsh Wren, are yet unascertained ; and it is singular to remark how 

 near it approaches to another species inhabiting the temperate parts of 

 the southern hemisphere in America, namely the Sylvia platensis, figured 

 and indicated by Buffon. The description, however, of this bird, ob- 

 tained by CoMMERsoN, on the banks of La Plata, is too imperfect for 

 certainty. It was found probably in a marshy situation, as it entered the 

 boat in which he was sailing. The time of arrival and departure of this 



