680 MICHIGAN BIRD LIFE. 
that mud has been used; we have found, however, no mud in any which 
we have examined. The interior is rather neatly lined with fine grasses 
and other soft materials, often with down from the cattails. The entrance 
is through a small hole in one side which is usually inconspicuous. This 
nest is swung among the reeds, grass, or cattails, usually over standing 
water, but occasionally second nests are built in nearly dry situations 
after the spring floods have subsided. In addition to the nest which 
contains the eggs the birds build numbers of similar nests which apparently 
are never occupied, or are occupied only for roosting purposes. It is a 
common thing to find twenty to fifty such nests in an area of a few acres, 
and the male is commonly believed to have constructed all these super- 
numerary nests in order to mislead its enemies and prevent the discovery 
of the occupied nests. However this may be, not one nest in twenty is 
found to contain eggs or young, and the birds seem to continue building 
as long as young remain in any of the nests. 
In the southern part of the state eggs are commonly laid about the first 
week in June and a second set may be found in mid-July or occasionally as 
late as the last of that month. They are five to eight in number and are so 
heavily spotted with brown as to give them a dark mahogany or chocolate 
color, entirely obscuring the ground color. They average .66 by .46 inches. 
The habits of this bird are familiar to everyone who has traversed dense 
cattail swamps through which a boat has to be dragged or poled, the bird 
and its song being characteristic features of these flooded lands. The 
bird is continually rambling about among the grass stems, climbing to 
the tops of the reeds and cattails, and occasionally fluttering a few yards 
upward into the air, uttering his peculiar sputtering song and then dropping 
back out of sight in the reeds. 
The song is very difficult of description, but is a mixture of scraping, 
squeaking, bubbling and chattering notes, with a few more musical bars 
which are certainly wren-like, but also mostly characteristic of this par- 
ticular species. The bird probably excels all other members of the family 
in the grotesque attitudes which it takes, frequently, throwing the tail 
so far over the back, and the head so far toward the tail, that the tips 
of the bill and tail almost meet. 
The food consists very largely of aquatic insects which creep up the 
marshy vegetation as they transform from their larval condition, and are 
easily secured by the bird. It also eats small crustacea, as well as spiders, 
caterpillars, and such other forms of minute animal life as abound in wet 
places. It cannot be said that the consumption of such forms confers 
any great benefit upon the agriculturist, but the bird undoubtedly does 
its part toward restricting the undue increase of insects injurious to water 
plants. 
The only injury which we have ever heard attributed to this bird is 
the wilful destruction of the eggs of some swamp birds. Mr. Harold 
Stewart and Mr. T. L. Hankinson have recorded the destruction of the 
eges of the Least Bittern, presumably by the Marsh Wren, which was 
seen hovering around the nests, the eggs in those nests being found 
punctured immediately afterward (Bull. Mich. Orn. Club, II, 1898, 18). 
No explanation of this peculiar habit has been made. It seems possible 
that the wren may pierce the eggs in order to take the contents as food, 
but this is hardly likely. 
