WINTER WREN. 95 
(M. troglodjtes) than any other species we have. During his residence 
ere, he frequents the projecting banks of creeks, old roots, decayed 
logs, small bushes, and rushes near watery places ; he even approaches 
the farm-house, rambles about the wood pile, creeping among the in- 
terstices like a mouse. With tail erect, which is his constant habit, 
mounted on some projecting point or pinnacle, he sings with great 
animation. Even in the yards, gardens, and outhouses of the city, 
he appears familiar and quite at home. In short, he possesses almost 
all the habits of the European species. He is, however, migratory, 
which may be owing to the superior coldness of our continent. Never 
having met with the nest and eggs, I am unable to say how nearly 
they approximate to those of the former. 
I can find no precise description of this bird, as an American species, 
in any European publication. Even some of our own naturalists seem 
to have confounded it with another very different bird, the Marsh 
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 gen- 
eral 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 Cer- 
thia, and the Winter Wren a true Motacilla. Indeed, we have no 
less than five species of these birds in Pennsylvania, that, by a super- 
ficial 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 frequegt residence along the 
Atlantic coast during the severest winters ; Brough I rather suspect 
that he proceeds considerably to the northward; as the Snow Bird, 
(F. Hudsonia,) which arrives about the same time with the Winter 
Wren, does not even breed at Hudson’s Bay, but passes that settle- 
gen in June, on his way to the northward; how much farther is un- 
nown. 
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 back, 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 sec- 
ondaries next the body ; tips of the wings, dusky; throat, line over the 
* See Professor Barton’s observations on this subjec« inder the article Motacil/a 
troglodytes? Fragments, &c. p. 18; Ibid. p. 12. 
