128 IN BERKSHIRE FIELDS 



who chose it as their home, still know where such 

 gardens grow in the back country, and there they 

 still nest. 



Among the birds to look for as residents of the 

 house, barn, or outbuildings are the house wren, 

 the purple martin, the barn, chimney, and cliff 

 swallows, the phcebe, the robin, and the chipping- 

 sparrow. All of this group are probably familiar 

 to the average person. The busy and domestic 

 little wrens seldom build far from a dwelling. They 

 will perch their nests almost anywhere — on a pro- 

 tected beam, behind a blind, under an eave; but 

 if you will provide nesting-boxes for them, placed 

 on trees or trellis close to the house — any of the 

 standard boxes with the entrance hole the size of a 

 silver quarter — they will select these houses in 

 preference. For two years a pair of wrens built 

 on a beam on our back porch, but after we had 

 placed a box for them on a grape-trellis some thirty 

 feet away they deserted the porch for this new 

 dwelling, abandoning a half -built nest. They filled 

 the box nearly full of twigs, and then lined the nest 

 with soft material, including cotton batting, which 

 we put on the ground near by. After the eggs were 

 laid the mother wren stuck to her job steadily and 

 silently while her mate fed her. He was not silent, 

 however, but kept up an almost incessant sweet 

 little chatter, hopping along the trellis close to the 

 nest after he had passed in a bug to his wife, and 

 singing his tuneless song over and over. When 

 the little birds hatched they filled the tiny box 

 almost to bursting. You wondered how the mother 

 could get in and out. One day we heard a great 



