The Western Wittier Wren 
Heard at close quarters the bird will occasionally employ a ventrilo- 
quial trick, dropping suddenly to sotto voce, so that the song appears to 
come from a distance. Again, it will move crescendo and diminuendo, 
as though the supply pipe of this musical cascade were submitted to 
varying pressure at the fountain head. 
A singing bird is the best evidence available of the proximity of the 
nest. Usually the male bird posts himself near the sitting female and 
publishes his domestic happiness in musical numbers. But again, he 
may only be pausing to congratulate himself upon the successful com¬ 
pletion of another decoy, and the case is hopeless for the nonce. 
For nesting sites the Wrens avail themselves of cubby holes and 
crannies in upturned roots or fallen logs, and in hre-holes of half-burned 
stumps. A favorite situation is one of the crevices which occur in a 
large hr tree when it falls and splits open. Or the nest may be found 
under the bark of a decaying log, or deeply bedded in a mossy bank. 
In the coastal streams of Santa Cruz County the Winter Wrens have 
almost a monopoly of the stream-bed, and they stick very closely to it. 
Crannies in boulders and rock-walls are quite as acceptable as an up¬ 
turned root or a log-jam; and most of the nests are actually over running 
water. If the site selected has a wide entrance, this is walled up by 
the nesting material, and only a smooth round aperture an inch and a 
quarter in diameter is left to admit to the nest proper. In default of 
any such shelter, birds have been known to construct their nests at the 
center of some baby^ hr, or in the drooping branches of an evergreen tree 
at a height of a foot or more from the ground. In such case, the nest is 
finished to the shape of a cocoanut, with an entrance-hole in the side 
a little above the center. 
In all cases the materials used are substantially the same, chiefly 
green moss, with an abundance of hr or redwood twigs shot through 
its walls and foundations. This shell is heavily lined with very hne 
mosses, intermingled with rabbit fur, deer hair or other soft substances; 
while the inner lining is almost invariably of feathers. 
“Cocks’ nests,” or decoys, are the favorite diversion of this inde¬ 
fatigable bird, so that, as with the restless activities of four-year-old 
children, one sighs to think of the prodigious waste of energies entailed. 
The aboriginal cause of this quaint instinct, so prevalent among the 
Wrens, would seem to be the desire to deceive and discourage enemies, 
but in the case of the Winter Wren one is led to suspect that the hard¬ 
working husband is trying to meet a perpetual challenge to occupy all 
available sites—a miser hoarding opportunities. 
A troop of young Wrens just out of the nest is a cunning sight. 
The anxious parents counsel flight and the more circumspect of the brood 
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