DEAD WILLOW BEND. 119 



wren soiled with charcoal dust! All the professionals 

 agree to this; and yet I cannot but think it a little 

 strange that every house-wren that wanders to the re- 

 mote woods, and lives a life strikingly different from its 

 kind that tenant the boxes in our door-yards, should 

 show decided melanism. Do abnormally dark feathers 

 cause them to retire to the quiet retreats of gloomy 

 woods ? It would appear so, yet this of course is utterly 

 absurd. Whether house-wren or wood-wren, it matters 

 not ; but here, delighting to clamber over prostrate and 

 mossy tree-trunks ; to thread its way among the tangled 

 stems of dwarfed kalmias, and to skim along the water's 

 surface, picking up " skaters " as it goes, these wrens in 

 nothing recall their noisy brothers, that sing and scold, 

 the livelong day, about our houses. Nor are they noisy 

 and fretful, like the typical "cedon." Like all active 

 birds, they chirp frequently, and often pausing in their 

 insect-hunting, sing the song of the wren at home ; the 

 same notes, but yet more tuneful ; freer of the harsh, 

 rasping rattle that too often converts the song to mere 

 noise. 



These wild wrens, too, nest in a different manner. 

 Choosing a hollow in some decayed tree, they place the 

 nest quite out of reach, often six or eight feet from the 

 opening that leads to it, or build on the ground among 

 the roots of a large tree, where they are exposed to the 

 attacks of small mammals. 



That Audubon's wood -wren was a charcoal - dusted 

 house -wren is, of course, not impossible; but that a 

 darker -plumaged variety or race of the Troglodytes 

 cedon has taken itself to the woods, is not unlikely to 



