THE CAROLINA WREN 
By WITMER STONE 
The National Association of Audubon Societies 
Educational Leaflet No. 50 
Two birds, dissimilar in color and family relationship, are always 
closely associated in my mind because of their similarity in voice and 
customary haunts — the Cardinal and the Carolina Wren. Both are char- 
acteristic of that region, southern in its climate and productions, which 
stretches along our South Atlantic seaboard, pushes northward up the 
valleys of the Susquehanna and Delaware rivers, and ascends the Missis- 
sippi and its lower branches. 
NEST OF A CAROLINA WREN, BUILT IN AN OLD WASH-BASIN. 
Photographed by Joseph Armfield. 
We find both of these birds throughout the year in alder-swamps, 
and in low, moist woodlands, for they appear to be resident wherever 
they occur ; and time and again I have been puzzled in early spring, when 
both are in full song, to distinguish their varied melodies. 
Although of regular occurrence about Philadelphia, the Carolina 
Wren is not so abundant nor so uniformly distributed as along the 
broader valley of the Susquehanna, a little farther to the westward. That 
is the region particularly associated in my mind with the Carolina Wren 
in summer, just as the low swamps of New Jersey stand out as its winter 
quarters. The broad river rushing along among its rocks and islands, 
197 
