26 
NATURE NOTES. 
while the other is not. Even after this, when the eggs have 
been laid and the hen is sitting, the cock — in order, apparently, 
to be doing something — goes on constructing other nests, some- 
times to the number of three or four, so that the same pair of 
birds may be owners of considerable house-property. A strange 
feature is that two nests simultaneously constructed appear to 
be built on quite opposite principles. Thus I have known one 
set against a wall and entirely made of white bents, rendering 
it as conspicuous as it could be, while the other, centred by 
a hole in a rotten beam, was most artistically assimilated to its 
surroundings. 
The wren will, moreover, build in situations the most various 
—against the trunk of a tree, or against a haystack, in a creep- 
ing plant, or against a stone wall — and chooses the most various 
materials, moss and dry ferns being particular favourites. In 
the recesses of the nest so built are laid a number of eggs, and 
we are presented with a problem, which confronts us in many 
other cases, as to how the parent bird contrives in the dark to 
prevent the struggle for existence from operating from the com- 
mencement — how the}'^ hinder the more vigorous and importu- 
nate youngsters getting all the food, thus condemning the rest 
to speedy extinction. There is no doubt that things are some- 
how so arranged as to secure the rights of all. 
The extra nests are not superduous, and serve a distinct 
purpose. The wren being so small a bird might be unable to 
withstand severe cold, which it braves by remaining with us 
throughout the winter. Accordingly a family party, long after 
the young are fledged and flown, will assemble to pass the night 
together in one of their shelter huts — they will even for as 
many as fifteen days come back to the original “ mothering 
nest,” and if they chance to be prematurely driven from this 
the cock bird will — though not without a good deal of trouble — 
manage to convey the whole troop to one of his own structures. 
It has been said by some observers that the refuge nests are 
built with their openings turned towards various points of the 
compass, and that one is each day selected according to the 
direction of the wind. However this may be, it is certain that 
throughout the winter this mode of obtaining warmth is resorted 
to : in default of a nest of their own a party of wrens will 
betake themselves to that of another bird, as many as fourteen 
together having been observed at Christmas time roosting under 
the eaves of a barn in that of a house-martin. 
John Gerard. 
