368 MEMOIRS OF THE NUTTALL ORNITHOLOGICAL CLUB. 



familiar as well as the most attractive and interesting of our city birds ; adapting 

 themselves easily to crowded and noisy surroundings ; obtaining the spiders 

 which formed their favorite food from piles of lumber or other debris in vacant 

 lots or from fences surrounding yards quite barren of trees or shrubbery ; rear- 

 ing their young successfully in localities much infested by cats ; ever active, 

 cheerful, contented ; delighting every one by their animated movements, fussily 

 self-assertive ways and bright, gushing songs. 



As long ago as I can remember, House Wrens frequented the old orchard 

 at the rear of our house. There were, I think, only one or two pairs at first, 

 but after I began putting up boxes and olive jars in the trees and on the out- 

 buildings the number of breeding pairs increased to three or four. They were 

 double-brooded, as a rule, and as each female laid six or seven eggs the first 

 time, and five or six the second, their young swarmed in the garden during most 

 of the summer. Whenever a stray cat entered the currant bushes she was sure 

 to start up ten or a dozen young Wrens and to be vigorously scolded by one and 

 all of them. Both old and young birds began to leave the garden before the 

 close of August, and we rarely saw any of them there after the middle of Sep- 

 tember. They lingered later than this, however, in woods and thickets on the 

 outskirts of Cambridge. 



At length the English Sparrows came and at once began to drive or crowd 

 the Wrens from these long-established haunts. The Wrens resisted with all the 

 spirit and determination for which they are so justly noted, but what could birds 

 so small and feeble do against the army of ruthless invaders ? The boxes and 

 olive jars became quickly filled with Sparrows' nests, and even the holes in trees 

 and buildings which were too small for the Sparrows to enter, were soon aban- 

 doned by the Wrens. The latter birds, indeed, were nearly or quite banished 

 from our city and town centers within a period extending over but little more than 

 five years — or from about 1875 to 1880. 



Up to 1889 several pairs of Wrens continued to breed in East Watertown, 

 not far to the westward of Mount Auburn, and in June, 1900, Mr. A. Vincent 

 Kidder found a nest with five eggs in an apple tree near the corner of Brattle 

 and Fayerweather Streets, Cambridge. Within the last few years migrating 

 birds have occasionally appeared in or near our garden and also in Norton's 

 Woods. During the past decade, however, the House Wren has been practically 

 confined to the more thinly settled portions of the Cambridge Region where, 

 especially in Belmont and Arlington, it still occurs in small and ever diminishing 

 numbers, chiefly in old apple orchards. It is deplorable that a bird so unique 

 in character and habits and so exceptionally attractive and interesting, should 

 thus have become nearly lost to our local fauna. 



