26 



THE WKEN'S BIBD-COMPANIONS. 



THE GREAT CAROLINA WREN. 



a shrill chirr-ree, chir-r-r, ckir-r-r, chirr-ree, and occasionally a harsh 

 chatter." 



Evidently the small songsters enjoy hugely what they do, and you can 

 fairly see the notes bubble out of their swelling gray bosoms, like water 



in a spring. Audubon's picture of 

 one of them, standing, with out- 

 stretched head and bulging throat, 

 always seemed an exaggeration until 

 I saw the living bird. I do not 

 know a louder singer than this wren, 

 notwithstanding his diminutive form ; 

 indeed, size has nothing to do with 

 power of voice in birds — witness the 

 noisy music of the pigmy kinglets. 



They have long, curved bills, 



serviceable in picking insects out of 



crannies about old wood -work, and 



out of the bark of trees or off the 



ground and leaves. I never saw one of them catch an insect on the 



wing, and I fancy their fare is mainly made up of a variety of helpless 



grubs. 



Here were robins, too. 



It is one of the good points of the robin that he sings when the weather 

 is cloudy rather more than during sunshine, and you hear all day the fine 

 music which in cloudless weather he reserves for the evening time of 

 shadows. Two or three of them were now tuneful in an orchard near me, 

 and once in a while I would catch sight of a meadow-lark or a grass-finch 

 hovering uncertainly over the sodden fields, as though disliking to drop 

 into the wet grass. From the woods, half a mile away, came the cawing 

 of crows and the complaint of a very melancholy dove indeed— a mourn- 

 ful croon which many persons mistake for that of an owl. Down in the 

 ditch beside the track an orange -vested barn -swallow was taking ad- 

 vantage of the moist condition of the soil to gather mud for his nest 

 somewhere in the neighborhood. Some of this he rolled with his bill 

 into little pellets for the "bricks" of his structure; some he kneaded 

 with bits of grass into small lumps, which he carried away grasped in his 

 claws. 



Occasionally an azure spot against the leaden sky showed a blue-bird 

 sitting silently overhead, and I thought of Mrs. "Whitney's poem, begin- 

 ning, 



