GREAT CAROLINA WREN. H7 



hopping in a nearly equal degree. The latter kind of motion it employs 

 when nearer the ground, and among piles of drifted timber. So fond is this 

 bird of the immediate neighbourhood of water, that it would be next to im- 

 possible to walk along the shore of any of the islands of the Mississippi, from 

 the mouth of the Ohio to New Orleans, without observing several on each 

 island. 



Among the many species of insects which they destroy, several are of an 

 aquatic nature, and are procured by them whilst creeping about the masses 

 of drifted wood. Their chirr-up and come-to-me come-to-me seldom cease 

 for more than fifteen or twenty minutes at a time, commencing with the first 

 glimpse of day, and continuing sometimes after sunset. 



The nest of the Carolina Wren is usually placed in a hole in some low 

 decayed tree, or in a fence-stake, sometimes even in the stable, barn, or 

 coach-house, should it there find a place suitable for its reception. I have 

 found some not more than two feet from the ground, in the stump of a tree 

 that had long before been felled by the axe. The materials employed in its 

 construction are hay, grasses, leaves, feathers, and horse-hair, or the dry 

 fibres of the Spanish moss; the feathers, hair or moss forming the lining, the 

 coarse materials the outer parts. When the hole is sufficiently large, the 

 nest is not unfrequently five or six inches in depth, although only just wide 

 enough to admit one of the birds at a time. The number of eggs is from 

 five to eight. They are of a broad oval form, greyish-white, sprinkled with 

 reddish-brown. Whilst at Oakley, the residence of my friend James Per- 

 kie, Esq. near Bayou Sara, I discovered that one of these birds was in the 

 habit of roosting in a Wood Thrush's nest that was placed on a low horizon- 

 tal branch, and had been filled with leaves that had fallen during the autumn. 

 It was in the habit of thrusting his body beneath the leaves, and I doubt not 

 found the place very comfortable. 



They usually raise two, sometimes three broods in a season. The young 

 soon come out from the nest, and in a few days after creep and hop about 

 with as much nimbleness as the old ones. Their plumage undergoes no 

 change, merely becoming firmer in the colouring. 



Many of these birds are destroyed by weasels and minxes. It is, notwith- 

 standing, one of the most common birds which we have as residents in Loui- 

 siana. They ascend along the shores of the Mississippi as high as the 

 Missouri river, and along the Ohio nearly to Pittsburgh, although they do not 

 occur in great numbers in the neighbourhood of that city. They are com- 

 mon in Georgia, the Carolinas, Kentucky, Ohio and Indiana. A few are to 

 be seen along the Atlantic shores as far as Pennsylvania, New Jersey and 

 New York. In New Jersey I have found its nest, near a swamp, a few 

 miles from Philadelphia. I never observed them farther to the eastward. 



Vol. II. 20 



