706 GEOLOGICAL SURVEY OF CANADA. 



CCLXXIII. TELMATODYTES Cabanis. 1850. 

 725. Long-billed Marsh Wren. 



Telmatodytes palustris palustris (Wilson) Coues. 1868. 



One procured at Godthaab, Greenland, in May, 1823. {Arct. 

 Man.) The first specimen taken in the province of New Brunswick 

 was near St. -John, October 3rd, 1895. Nothing more was noted of 

 this species until September 23rd, 1900, when two were heard at 

 Mud lake, 15 miles east of Scotch Lake. (W. H. Moore.) A scarce 

 summer resident at Montreal. The late Mr. Caulfield observed this 

 species. May 24th, in some reeds around a pond at C6te St. Paul, 

 and Mr. W. W. Dunlop has seen them on Nun island, above the 

 Victoria bridge. I found a pair nesting in the bullrushes and rank 

 herbage at the mouth of Laprairie. (Wintle.) 



A common summer resident around Ottawa. (Ottawa Naturalist, 

 Vol. V.) One of the commonest birds in eastern Ontario about the 

 St. Lawrence below Kingston. Sometimes remaining until the 

 middle of September. {Rev. C. J. Young.) Common summer 

 resident at Toronto, Ont. (/. H. Fleming.) 



Breeding Notes. — Builds a large bulky nest in reeds in marshes 

 around Ottawa. The nest is made of tops of grasses and reeds 

 worked into a ball with a hole in one side, lined with fine grass. 

 Eggs, 6 to 8, of a rich dark chocolate or so spotted with chocolate 

 as to make the ground colour appear to be chocolate. (G. R. White.) 

 Breeds abundantly in the marsh behind my house at Kew Beach, 

 Toronto. (W. Raine.) On June 6th, 1903, I visited the Lake 

 Francis marshes near Summertown, Ont., where I found many nests 

 of the long-billed marsh wren. The globular nests were ever)rwhere, 

 and resembled those of the field mouse but were very strongly woven 

 with rushes with a lining of feathery down from the bullrushes. The 

 entrance was a small round hole in the side, which, in the first nest, 

 I did not really find, but later I observed that it invariably opened 

 out between the rushes to which the nest was fastened. The nesting 

 sites were chiefly in clumps of last year's rushes, when they were 

 composed of dead material. Many birds, however, fastened their 

 nests to the long rank grasses which covered the marshes where the 

 water was only a few inches deep. In the latter choice, green grasses 

 were used in buUding, the wrens thus blending the colour of their 



