The House Wren 
155 
esteem coziness, and if a nook or apartment has too high a ceiling they 
immediately do away with this objectionable feature by raising the floor. 
It is well to keep this requirement in mind when making nest-boxes for 
wrens. A house 4x4x6 inches, with a sloping roof to shed water, and 
an opening two inches from the bottom, and not more than one inch in 
diameter, will not only meet all requirements, but help to repulse the 
innocently pestilent English Sparrow. 
The six or eight purplish-brown eggs, sometimes darker at the larger 
end, in due course turn into little birds that require a 
deal of tending; and so rapid is the process of diges- Sanitation 
tion with these very warm-blooded animals that the 
excreta are removed almost as fast as the food is supplied, and, strangely 
enough, appear to exceed the food in bulk ; but then it must be remembered 
that the food is of the most highly concentrated and nutritious animal 
matter. 
What a thrifty housewife Jenny is ! Not a speck or splash is allowed 
to drop near the dwelling, and often before the nestlings have actually 
taken wing, she is varying her marketing trips by a hunt for dwelling 
number two. 
In searching the outbuilding, sacred to tools and general litter, to be 
"mended some wet day,” for the little bags of spiders’ eggs that are so 
very appetizing to mother-bird as well as to the children, Jenny spied an 
old stone jug that had gone once too often with cider to the hayfield, and 
had come into contact with a rock. Badly cracked but not broken, it was 
pushed back on the shelf, neck out. At once curious and restless, Jenny 
explored the short neck, and, finding it much to her liking, sent Johnny 
to collect twigs for filling the unnecessary space while she finished pre- 
paring her youngsters to take wing, finding it convenient to leave an egg 
in the new nest before she had quite shaken off the care of the first family. 
Whether the cider- jug home was too hot, or whether the mice with 
which the tool-house was filled became too inquisitive, this second home 
was abandoned after a few days of incubation. On breaking the jug to 
see what had happened to the eggs after the wren had flown off to find 
new quarters for a third venture, evidence pointed to 
the bird or birds having destroyed their own eggs in 
a fit of temper or disgust at their surroundings. Each 
egg was perforated by a single sharp thrust that could not have come 
from the teeth of a mouse, and the contents of the egg had not been 
otherwise disturbed. 
Such a state of things I once saw happen practically under my very 
eyes, although I could not tell whether the male or female was the egg- 
piercer. The nest was in a small house in the porch-vine. One morning, 
a few days after incubation had begun, the return of one bird was heralded 
by violent scolding on the part of the one sitting. Then both flew about, 
lunging at each other and fighting desperately. One bird, rather worsted, 
stopped to rest, wings spread and panting, when immediately the other 
flew into the house and proceeded to scratch and break the furniture. 
Destroying its 
own Eggs 
