54 BRITISH BIRDS’ EGGS. 
Famity TROGLODYTID-A. 
COMMON WREN. 
TROGLODYTES PARVULUS, Jvoch. 
Pl. IX., figs. 9-13. 
Geogr. distr.—Throughout Europe from the north of Scandinavia 
to Algeria; eastward to Central Asia ; common nearly everywhere in 
Great Britain, and resident. 
Food.—Insects in all stages and woodlice. 
Nest.—A strongly-built and usually very neat structure, varying 
considerably in form and materials according to the position in which 
it is placed, but always cave-like (the entrance being in front or at the 
side, never at the top); one in my collection from a laurustinus hedge 
is oblong-ovate, and produced in front of the entrance into a sort of 
half cup, which must have rendered the interior very damp in wet 
weather; it is the nearest approach to a top entrance that I have 
seen. As a rule the variations may be summed up as follows: if in 
hedges or among brambles in woods, it is formed of dry plant-stalks, a 
quantity of soft decayed leaf mixed with a little moss, and, towards 
the inside, a few (perhaps three or four) feathers; the outside is com- 
pletely and somewhat loosely covered with decayed or withered oak 
and other leaves and a little vegetable fibre. If in an open bush, 
sometimes when in a hawthorn hedge, if against an old tree or on the 
top of a stump, it is almost entirely constructed externally of green 
moss; sometimes, again, when made against a young and vigorous 
tree, it is formed almost entirely of the stalks and leaves of dead 
grasses; if in a barn, of straw; if in hanging brambles, filled with 
rubbish, of dead grasses and moss. All these forms of nest I have 
taken recently, and others, formed almost wholly of clover or other 
materials which were handy, have been described; all nests, however, 
so far as I know, have wu little, though sometimes a very little, moss 
ani a few feathers in the inner lining; most of them are round or oval, 
with the entrance in front and near the top. 
Posttion of nest.——In hedges, hawthorn bushes, furze, laurels, in 
ivy on walls or open caves by the roadside, against trunks of trees 
either openly near the ground or higher up in ivy; in brambles and 
straggling undcrgrowth in woods, under overlapping ledges of steep 
banks, in faggot-stacks, against clover and other stacks, under project- 
ing thatches of outhouses, upon a beam in the wall of a barn, but 
not in holes like the nest of the Lilue Tit, which countrymen and 
tyros commonly mistake for that of the Wren. 
Number of eggs.—Usually stated to be 7-8; the regular number is 
certainly 6, so far as my experience goes; and I have never found a 
nest with more: out of seven nests in my possession, which I 
took during two seasons, four have a full clutch of 6, and in the others 
the clutch is incomplete; the same may be said of the whole of those 
found by me during eleven consecutive years. 
Time of nidification.—V. 
Not only does this species do its utmost to conceal its 
