46 THE Birps Agout Us. 
merely during the twilight, but long after the sun has 
set and stars are visible. In the summer of 1893 I 
heard one singing long after twilight, while passing 
a dense growth of rhododendrons on the water's 
edge. There was no moon, and the general hush 
that rested over the landscape indicated that no dis- 
turbance of the locality had occurred. The notes 
were many, varied, and in full tone, and not the 
drawn-out ones that indicate the bird is singing in its 
sleep. 
Bewick’s wren is a Western species that bears a 
close resemblance to the Carolina, but is slightly 
smaller, and not nearly so fine a singer. Its general 
habits are about the same. 
Holding prominent place among the small birds of 
the far West is the Cactus-wren. 
Dr. Coues says of this bird,— 
“The English name which the ‘ Cactus’-wren has acquired indi- 
cates the nature of its customary resorts, and affords a hint of its 
peculiar nidification. As we have already seen, several of the Ari- 
zona birds are architects of singular skill and taste; the Cactus-wren 
is one of them. In the most arid and desolate regions of the South- 
west, where the cacti flourish with wonderful luxuriance, covering the 
impoverished tracts of volcanic déb77s with a kind of vegetation only 
less surly and forbidding than the very scoria, this wren makes its 
home, and places its nests on every hand in the thorny embrace of the 
repulsive vegetation. True to the instincts and traditions of the 
wren family, it builds a bulky and conspicuous domicile; and when 
many are breeding together, the structures become as noticeable as 
the nests which a colony of marsh-wrens build in the heart of the 
swaying reeds.”’ 
Probably no two small birds common to the East- 
ern States, and found in almost every reedy meadow, 
are so little known to people generally as the Marsh- 
