FIELD AND STUDY 



surdly happy he is over a few dry twigs there in that 

 box, and his little freckled mate sitting upon her 

 eggs! His throat swells and throbs as if he had all 

 the winds of jEolus imprisoned in it, and the little 

 tempest of joy in there rages all the time. His song 

 goes off as suddenly as if some one had touched a 

 spring or switched on a current. If feathers can 

 have a feathered edge, the wren has it. 



"What bird is that?" asked an invalid wife, 

 seated on the porch near a wreri-box. "Is it never 

 still, and never silent? It gets on my nerves." 



"Neither still nor silent long at a time," replied 

 her husband, "except when asleep." 



It repeats its song at least six" thousand times a 

 day for two or three months, at the same time that it 

 brings many scores of insects to feed its young. But 

 this activity does not use up all" the energy of the 

 wren. He gets rid of some of the surplus in building 

 cock, or sham, nests in every unoccupied bird-box 

 near him. He fills the cavities up with twigs, and 

 I have even seen him carry food into these sham 

 nests, playing that he had young there. (I saw him 

 do it yesterday, July 7th; he held in his beak what 

 seemed to be a small green worrh .) Not even these 

 activities use up all his energy; it overflows in his 

 shaking and vibrating wings while in song. 



The song of the house wren is rather harsh and 

 shrill, far inferior as a musical performance to that 

 of the winter wren. The songs of the two differ as 

 78 



