I 



MARSH WREN. 



59 



convenience, is scarcely inferior to one, and far superior to many, 

 of its more musical brethren. This is formed outwardly of wet 

 rushes mixed with mud, well intertwisted, and fashioned into the 

 form of a cocoa nut. A small hole is left two-thirds up, for en- 

 trance, the upper edge of which projects like a pent house over the 

 lower, to prevent the admission of rain. The inside is lined with 

 fine soft grass, and sometimes feathers; and the outside, when har- 

 dened by the sun, resists every kind of weather. This nest is ge- 

 nerally suspended among the reeds, above the reach of the highest 

 tides, and is tied so fast in every part to the surrounding reeds, as 

 to bid defiance to the winds and the waves. The eggs are usually 

 six, of a dark fawn color, and very small. The young leave tlie 

 nest about the twentieth of June, and they generally have a second 

 brood in the same season. 



The size, general color, and habit of this bird of erecting its 

 tail, gives it, to a superficial observer, something of the appear- 

 ance of the common House Wren, represented in Plate VIII of this 

 work ; and still more that of the Winter Wren, figured in the same 

 plate ; but with the former of these it never associates ; and the lat- 

 ter has left us some time before the Marsh Wren makes his ap- 

 pearance. About the middle of August they begin to go off, and 

 on the first of September very few of them are to be seen. How 

 far north the migrations of this species extend I am unable to say ; 

 none of them to my knowledge winter in Georgia, or any of the 

 southern states. 



The Marsh Wren is five inches long, and six in extent; the 

 whole upper parts are dark brown, except the upper part of the 

 head, back of the neck, and middle of the back, which are black, 

 the two last streaked with white ; the tail is short, rounded, and 

 barred with black ; wings slightly barred ; a broad strip of white 

 passes over the eye half way down the neck ; the sides of the neck 

 are also mottled with touches of a light clay color on a whitish 

 ground; whole under parts pure silvery white, except the vent. 



