WRENS 337 



General habits. — While in the South, this tiny wren is very 

 quiet and retiring in habits, frequenting brushy woodland, 

 where it creeps about among fallen timber and in brush piles 

 like a little mouse. Being so shy and unobtrusive, and so 

 small as well, it is usually overlooked by the average observer. 

 On November 4, 1915, I spent most of the day, from about 

 9 o'clock till nearly sundown, on a small island or "towhead," 

 as it is locally termed, in the Tennessee River at Muscle Shoals 

 watching for wild geese. One of these little wrens also spent 

 the day there, dodging about in a pile of brush and running in 

 and out of a log pile. He scarcely moved 10 feet all day and 

 often came within 3 or 4 feet of my face without showing any 

 signs of alarm. Even a number of heavy shots fired at geese 

 did not frighten him away. 



In its summer home in the northern forests this wren has 

 a wonderful song, which Mrs. Bailey describes as "a tinkling, 

 rippling roundelay, ♦ * * full of trills, runs, and grace 

 notes."* 



Food habits. — This species is probably strictly insectivor- 

 ous. Its diet includes beetles, bugs, small grasshoppers, and 

 crickets, caterpillars, spiders, etc., and the bird has been 

 known to capture boll weevils. 



SHORT-BILLED MARSH WREN: Cistothorus stellaris 



(Naumann) . 



State records. — The short-billed marsh wren occurs not un- 

 commonly as a migrant and winter resident. At Bon Secour, 

 October 18 to 25, 1908, it was fairly common m the marshes, 

 especially along the borders next to the uplands. At Orange 

 Beach, January 30 and 31, 1912, 1 took two specimens, and on 

 Dauphin and Petit Bois Islands, February 12 and 13, 1912, 

 found the birds numerous in dry grassy areas among the 

 marshes. One was seen also near Mobile on February 6, 1912. 

 Brown records a pair taken in an old rice field at Coosada, 

 March 21, 1878 ; Saunders mentions seeing one "along a little 

 alder-lined creek at Hollins," May 3, 1908; Holt took one at 

 Barachias, January 9, 1913 ; and Golsan secured one of a pair 

 at Autaugaville, ,April 29, 1916. 



•Bailey, Florence M., in Chapman, Handbook of Birds of Eastern North America, p. 

 479, 1912. 



