The Story of the Wren 



By Clara Kern Bayliss 



The little rusty brown Wrens are known as troglodytes, or cave dwellers, 

 on account of their propensity to creep into a hole. The House Wren never 

 builds in the open. It finds a hole in a post, a crack in a building, an old pair of 

 shoes, a box, or a garment on some back porch. 



This year, 1916, a pair built in a coat hanging on a porch ; not in a pocket, 

 but by a lapel and against the wall. How they made anything stay there was a 

 puzzle to everyone who saw the nest ; and fearful that the wind would destroy it, 

 the former proprietor of the garment nailed the bottom of the coat to the house. 

 Otherwise the amount of material which the industrious builders carried in must 

 have fallen of its own weight without the assistance of the wind. One-half grown 

 birdling did fall to the floor, and, though returned to the nest by human hands, the 

 bump was too much for him and presently he perished. Yet in this singular 

 habitation the pair succeeded in rearing four healthy youngsters who took their 

 departure in good spirits on the 8th of July. 



Several years ago a pair built in a small keg fastened above the grape trellis. 

 There was no place for them to alight except the bung hole, and to this they clung 

 and had to turn every twig endwise to get it into their chosen castle. But a 

 wren is not to be discouraged by difficulties, and endwise they did turn a great 

 mass of sticks, some of them nine inches long, filling their keg half full before 

 they were satisfied. They left a little tunnel at the back of which was a soft, hair- 

 lined cradle for their nestlings. 



About the time that the pair began to build in- the coat, or, to be exact, on 

 May 26, we noticed some Wrens flitting about a wren house in the poplar in front 

 of the lawn. They carried in several sticks and then, with a fickleness common 

 to them and Bluebirds and other bipeds, feathered and unfeathered, they left that 

 box and went to one in the osage tree twenty-five feet away. It may be that the 

 larger opening in the latter made it easier to insert the sticks, though they carried 

 in less material than most Wrens do even in smaller quarters. 



Possibly the thickening foliage of the poplar was not to their liking; for 

 though the Wren creeps into a hole, he is not at all secretive. Far from it. He is 

 open and above board in all that he does. He wants his nest in a dark place, but 

 he wants broiling sunshine all around it, and nothing pleases him so much as a 

 box on a post with no foliage near. They did not confide to me the reason for the 

 change, and I can only surmise it. But by June 9th, and probably by the 6th, 

 there were four eggs in the soft grass and down of the nest, and on June 18th 

 the happy father did tell me very distinctly that there was at least one pink, grub- 

 like bird in his home. No human father ever was more delighted or found it 

 harder to keep away from the cradle. He was simply tickled; pleased doesn't 

 express his fluttering ecstacy. He peeked in at the door, hung on the perpen- 



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