278 SINGING BIRDS. 
tship, 'tsh tship. In the early part of the breeding season the 
male is very lively and musical, and in his best humor he tunes 
up a ‘ship ‘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 dazgh, hardly louder than the croak- 
ing ofa frog. When approached, these birds 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 “hip tship a day day day day may for 
about a month from their arrival be heard pleasantly echoing 
ona 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 grati- 
fication 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 inge- 
nuity and labor these simple materials are loosely entwined 
together into a spherical form, with a small and rather obscure 
entrance left in 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 probably from 6 to 8. In a nest containing 7 eggs there 
were 3 of them larger than the rest and perfectly fresh, while 
the 4 smaller were far advanced towards hatching ; from this 
circumstance we may fairly infer that #wo 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 with the 
ordinary Marsh-Wren, are yet unascertained ; and it is singu- 
lar to remark how near it approaches to another species in- 
habiting the temperate parts of the southern hemisphere in 
America, namely, the Sy/via p/atensis, figured and indicated by 
