iSSs-] Ingersoll oil Common Names of American Birds. '1*1 



is concerned.* In Tomtit (Ohio Valley) and Sapsztcke?' (Mary- 

 land) for these birds, other errors are indicated. BufFon's 

 TorcJiepot ("pot-cleaner") perhaps alludes to the smutty black 

 of the face. Chiplnenee is a good name I have heard in South- 

 ern Massachusetts, describing its well-known note very accurately. 



Skipping such terms as Brown Creeper^ Oven-bird^ and 

 others readil}' understood, I come to the varied tribe of Wrens, 

 about which in the Old World so much of personal affection and 

 legendary, not to say superstitious, interest gathers. Wren de- 

 rives from an ancient root ivrin^ whence, we are told, came 

 Anglo-Saxon words meaning to neigh (as a horse), squeal (as a 

 pig) or chirp (as a sparrow). But the neighing horse and 

 squealing pig of which these words were always used were un- 

 castrated animals ; and the literal meaning of wrenne in the 

 Anglo-Saxon was the " little lascivious bird." Few words have 

 suflered or admitted of less change than this during all the cen- 

 turies of vicissitude through which it has passed. None of 

 the names of our representatives of this family require special 

 notice ; it may be mentioned, however, that Telniatodytes palus- 

 tris is Tomtit in South Carolina and Reed Warbler in Rhode 

 Island. 



The Frenchmen in Louisiana in the early days gave to their 

 familiar Wren (probably the Thryothorus ludovicianus) the 

 name Roitelet or "Little King." This was a direct importation 

 from Europe, and perpetuated a bit of folk-lore, which tells us 

 that the Wren is the superior of the Eagle, and hence King of 

 the birds, but a diminutive King, — hence Kinglet or Roitelet. 

 This supremacy was attained by the trial of the birds, in congress 

 assembled, as to which had the greatest powers of flight. The 

 Eagle soaring above all the rest, thought himselfyac/Ze princeps, 

 when an impudent little beggar of a Wren that had slyly perched 



* Though it is true enough that it is an, "error" so far as the general woodland habits 

 of the SittidcB in the United States are concerned, yet I know of opposing instances. 

 For example : My neighbor in New Haven this winter has been accustomed to feed 

 a colony of gray squirrels by placing nuts of various sorts on his window-ledge, whither 

 they go after them. The Nuthatches discovered, and two or three came regularly all 

 winter, feeding upon the broken nuts and often flying away with large fragments in their 

 beaks.' They would frequently place a nut in a corner of the window-frame, where 

 it would rest firmly, and then hammer at it with their pickax-beaks most sedulously- 

 breaking the shells of the lighter sorts, and crushing the inner septa of the heavy kinds 

 like hickory nuts. They did not seek worms, but fed greedily upon the substance of 

 the nut-kernel. 



