WINTER WREN. 175 



Wren* which arrives in Pennsylvania from the south in May, builds a 

 globular or pitcher-shaped nest, which it suspends among the rushes 

 and bushes by the river side, lays five or six eggs of a dark fawn color, 

 and departs again in September. But the colors and markings of that 

 bird are very unlike those of the Winter Wren, and its song altogether 

 different. The circumstance of the one arriving from the north as the 

 other returns to the south, and vice versa, with some general resemblance 

 between the two, may have occasioned this mistake. They, however, 

 not only breed in different regions, but belong to different genera, the 

 Marsh Wren being decisively a species of Oerthia, and the Winter Wren a 

 true Motacilla. Indeed we have no less than five species of these birds 

 in Pennsylvania, that by a superficial observer would be taken for one 

 and the same ; but between each of which, nature has drawn strong, 

 discriminating and indelible lines of separation.^ These will be pointed 

 out in their proper places. 



If this bird, as some suppose, retires only to the upper regions of the 

 country, and mountainous forests, to breed, as is the case with some 

 others, it will account for his early and frequent residence along the 

 Atlantic coast during the severest winters ; though I rather suspect that 

 he proceeds considerably to the northward ; as the Snow-bird {F. Mud- 

 sonid),' which arrives about the same time with the Winter Wren, does 

 not even breed at Hudson's Bay ; but passes that settlement in June, 

 on his way to the northward ; how much farther is unknown. 



The length of the Winter Wren is three inches and a half, breadth 

 five inches ; the upper parts are of a general dark brown, crossed with 

 transverse touches of black, except the upper parts of the head and 

 neck, which are'plain; the black spots on the back terminate in minute 

 points of dull white ; the first row of wing coverts is also marked with 

 specks of white at the extremities of the black, and tipped minutely 

 with black ; the next row is tipped with points of white ; the primaries 

 are crossed with alternate rows of black and cream color ; inner vanes 

 of all the quills dusky, except the three secondaries next the body ) tips 

 of the wings dusky ; throat, line over the eye, sides of the neck, ear- 

 feathers and breast, dirty white, with minute transverse touches of a 

 drab or clay color ; sides under the wings speckled with dark brown, 

 black, and dirty white ; belly and vent thickly mottled with sooty black, 

 deep brown, and pure white, in transverse touches ; tail very short, con- 

 sisting of twelve feathers, the exterior one, on each side, a quarter of an 

 inch shorter, the rest lengthening gradually to the middle ones ; legs 

 and feet a light clay color, and pretty stout ; but straight, slender, half. 

 an inch long, not notched at the point, of a dark brown or black above, 



* See Professor Barton's observatioits on this subject, under the article Motacilla 

 troglodytes? "Fragments," &c., p. 18, lb. p. 12. 



