HOUSE WREN. 153 
of such boxes it is readily induced to take up its abode in gardens and door yards, not 
only in the country but even in towns and larger cities. Frequently a pair of Wrens 
engage in regular combat with Bluebirds and Martins, in which the latter are often 
defeated by the vigilance and courage of the former. Its worst enemy is the European 
Sparrow, which not only expels the famous Bluebirds but which usually intrudes in 
flocks on the House Wren’s domicile and drives the Wren away. If nesting boxes be 
not: furnished, it is satisfied with ‘any crevice or hole in a wall, with eaves of stables 
and barns, with window-sills and knot-holes in trees. It even breeds under the roofs of 
piazzas and on beams of unfinished rooms in the upper stories of dwellings. Sometimes 
it nests in empty jars, in discarded stove-pipes, in pockets and sleeves of old garments 
hanging in outbuildings, and in old hats. An enthusiastic lover of the beautiful in 
nature, Miss Hedwig Schlichting, informs me that a pair of House Wrens nested in an 
old wooden shoe which was kept as a curiosity in an arbor of her garden and in which 
the gardener used to put his strings and cordage for fastening up flowers. These strings 
the birds utilized in forming the foundation of their nest, regarding them as provi- 
dentially provided for their special benefit. If the nest is built in a large cavity the 
birds carry in such a mass of various materials that the whole space is soon filled. 
Sticks, plant-stalks, coarse grasses, bark-strips, etc., form the exterior barricade, leaving 
only a small entrance. The interior of this mass of material holds the nest proper, 
composed of fine bark-strips, rootlets, and grasses lined with feathers, cotton-like sub- 
stances, pieces of fur, bristles, etc. In small cavities soft materials enter almost exclu- 
sively into the composition of the structure. The eggs, of which there are often two 
sets in a season, are from six to nine in number; they are of a pinkish-white ground- 
color, very closely sprinkled all over with reddish or rusty brown dots. They measure 
about .65%.55 and are in form nearly spherical or oblong-oval. 
The food consists invariably of insects, especially of small caterpillars, plant-tlice, 
and the like, which render the birds great benefactors to the farmer and gardener. The 
young require an immense amount of food daily. After they have left the nest they keep 
together for some time, “moving about, an interesting, sociable, and active group” 
under the charge of their parents. 
The Wood Wren which the famous Audubon described and figured as a distiné&t 
species, our scientific ornithologists of to-day regard as only somewhat darker colored 
specimens of the House Wren, hardly sufficiently distinét to be treated even as a variety. 
PARKMAN’S WREN, also known as the WESTERN House WREN, Troglodytes aédon 
parkmani CoUvEs, represents the common species in western North America, from Texas, 
the Mississippi valley, and Manitoba westward to the Pacific; north it is found 
in the region of the Great Slave Lake, south to Jalapa, Mexico, and in Lower 
California. It is merely a pale variety of the House Wren, ‘‘while certain supposed 
peculiarities of habit are shared by T. aédon in those unfrequented distriéts where its 
ways have not been modified by contact with civilization. In its nidification it agrees 
so closely with its eastern congener that one account would do for both. We have only 
to remember that it does not yet generally avail itself of the artificial accommodations 
that its relative usually selects, for the simple reason that there are comparatively few 
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