WREN 
75 
WREN. 
(Troglodytes parvulus.) 
Jenny Wren, Titty Wren, Cutty Wren. — The 
Wren is well-known everywhere in the British 
Islands, and indeed in Europe, and its small size 
and big heart make it an almost universal favourite. 
It is always a capital little bird to watch, whether 
we see it busily threading the interstices of a 
faggot-pile in its search for food, or spirting out 
its shrill and compact little song with its tail and 
head in the air, on the top of a stake, before spin- 
ning off with its straight, whirring flight, or chasing 
a prowling cat or weasel down the hedge-row with 
an unwearied flow of shrill, grating abuse. It is 
one of the birds, too, which haunt the neighbour- 
hood of human dwellings most closely, and seem 
to form for us a sort of inner circle of bird 
acquaintances. It nests in many different situations, 
some of the most common being among ivy on a tree 
or wall, in a hole or crevice in a wall, tree, haystack, 
or thatched roof, under the edge or cornice of turf 
and roots projecting from an earthy bank, and, rather 
less commonly, among thorns, brambles, garden 
shrubs, and furze-bushes, especially when tangled 
with dead bracken. Moss and dead leaves are the 
chief materials of the nest, which is oval or round, 
