The Marsh Wrens 
others, not having received the close-pressed interstitial filling, will 
be sodden from the last rains. 
The Marsh Wren’s nest is a compact ball of vegetable materials, 
lashed midway of cat-tails or bulrushes, living or dead, and having 
a neat entrance-hole in one side. A considerable variety of materials 
is used in construction, but in any given nest only one textile substance 
Taken in Fresno County Photo by the Author 
NEST OF MARSH WREN, IN SITU 
will preponderate. Dead cat-tail leaves may be employed, in which 
case the numerous loopholes will be filled with matted down from the 
same plant. Fine dry grasses may be utilized, and these so closely 
woven as practically to exclude the rain. In shallow lakes where rankly 
growing bulrushes predominate in the nesting areas, spirogyra is the 
material most largely used. This, the familiar, scum-like plant which 
masses under water in quiet places, is plucked out by the venturesome 
birds in great wet hanks and plastered about the nest until the required 
thickness is attained. While wet, the substance matches its surroundings 
admirably, but as it dries out it shrinks considerably and fades to a 
sickly light green, or greenish gray, which advertises itself among the 
obstinately green bulrushes. Where this fashion prevails, one finds it 
661 
