THE PERCHING BirDs. 47 
wrens. There are two, the long- and the short-billed 
species, the former being more common in the Mid- 
dle States in summer, and the latter the more com- 
mon in New England. In general habits they are 
quite alike, building nests of the same pattern. One, 
however, the short-billed species, lays white eggs; 
the other, the long-billed wren, eggs that are so 
speckled with chocolate dots that they appear at first 
glance to be of a uniform brown. 
In the valley of the Delaware the marsh-wrens are 
abundant as far as tide-water extends, but I have not 
noticed them in and about the ponds above it. They 
may be there in abundance, however. There are 
three features of these wrens’ lives that are prominent 
characteristics : they live in colonies ; they build huge 
globular nests in reeds and bulrushes; they never 
leave their homes, and always half the colony sings 
at once, or one bird rising above the reeds gives the 
order, as it were, and the colony joins in the chorus. 
Is it quite fair to speak of a bird’s song as “con- 
temptible,” as has been done, when it is a clear, rip- 
pling note, admirably adapted to the surroundings ? 
This little wren’s voice always suggested to me that 
it gathered up drops of water, charged them with 
music, and let them trickle down the reeds. 
My own observations of the nests have all been 
made in the same neighborhood that Wilson studied 
them, and now these nests lack a great deal of the 
mud, and of many hundreds I have found only one 
had a “ penthouse.” 
It is often asserted that our climate is changing, 
and probably in one respect it is: we are having 
