138 ROCK WREN. 
bobbing itself up and down every little while, like the Dipper, and presently creeps down 
into the stone-heap. Late in autumn its feathers become much worn from constant 
creeping among the rocks. In September it disappears.”’ 
Dr. Merriam found this Wren in Utah and Mr. Lloyd reports it a common winter 
resident in western Texas from Oct. 7 to May 1. Mr. R. Ridgway found it universally 
distributed from the summit of the Sierra Nevada eastward, as far as the party explored. 
In the middle provinces of the Rocky Mountains it was the most abundant species of 
the family; in the Wahsatch Mountains it was not so common. At Carson City he 
found it in the rubbish of the decaying pine-logs. Dr. Elliott Coues observed the Rock 
Wren throughout the Colorado Basin, where its “vivacious behavior and loud notes 
render it conspicuous among the other smaller plainly clad species. It is found in most 
situations, whether wooded or open, but evidently prefers rocky places, full of chinks 
and crannies, where it creeps furtively about like a mouse, only with greater agility, or 
skips and flutters from stone to stone. The greater portion of its habitat being still 
unsettled, the bird thus frequenting wild and desolate places has acquired a reputation 
for shyness and love of seclusion; but there is every reason to suppose that in the 
course of time, should the country ever grow populous, it will become as familiar as the 
House Wren. In the West, Parkman’s Wren, which is nothing but a variety of the 
sociable little T. aédon, continues to be quite as retiring and solitary a bird as the Rock 
Wren. In the case of the latter, we already have the premonitory signs of the semi- 
domestication of which the bird is susceptible; it often comes about the miner’s or 
squatter’s cabin, even building its nest in the chinks of the logs; and with equal 
readiness haunts the shrubbery of gardens in many of the western towns.. It would 
make a very disirable addition to our ‘household birds.’”’ 
Like the nests of all our species of this family, the Rock Wren’s is also composed 
of very miscellaneous materials. It uses such substances as happen to be readily avail- 
able. Sticks, weed-stems, grass, moss, bark-strips, hair, wool, feathers, etc., enter into the 
composition. The sites selected are quite as various; usually the nest is built in crannies 
of rocks, but it has also been found on the ground beneath rocks, in the natural cavity 
of a clay bank, etc. According to the observations of Mr. W. E. D. Scott, it raises two 
broods annually, at least in its southern habitat. Six to eight eggs or young were 
usually found in one nest.—The eggs, from four to eight or even nine in number, are 
“noticeable for their rotundity, and the crystalline purity and smoothness of the shell. 
The white ground is rather sparingly sprinkled with distinct reddish-brown dots, 
usually massed at the large end or wreathed around it.’ (Coues.) They measure from 
.72 to .77 inches in length by .66 to .66 in breadth. 
NAMES: Rock Wren, Rocky Mountain Wren.—Felsenzaunkénig (German). 
SCIENTIFIC NAMES: Troglodytes obsoletus Say (1823). Myiothera obsoleta Bonap. (1825). Thryothorus 
obsoletus Bonap. (1838). SALPINCTES OBSOLETUS Cas. (1847). 
DESCRIPTION: Adult: Above, pale brownish-gray, minutely dotted everywhere with blackish and whitish 
points together, and usually showing obsolete wavy bars of dusky. Rump, sides of the body, ‘and 
posterior part of the belly and under tail-coverts cinnamon-brown. Rest of under parts dirty white; 
throat and breast obsoletely streaked, and the under tail-coverts barred, with dusky. Middle tail- 
feathers brownish, with many dark bars; the other with cinnamon tips, then with a broad black bar; 
the outer one alternately barred with brownish and black. 
Length, 5.50 to 6 inches; wing, 2.82; tail, 2.40 inches. 
