200 
The Carolina Wren 
and mentions particularly its abundance on the banks and islands of the 
lower part of the Mississippi River. 
“I frequently heard these Wrens singing/’ he writes in the second 
volume of his Birds of America, “from the roof of an abandoned flat- 
boat, fastened to the shore a small distance below the City of New 
Orleans” ; and he sketches in a few words one of those charmingly 
graphic pictures of bird-ways in which Audubon was so adept. “When 
its song was finished,” he writes, “the bird went on creeping from one 
board to another, thrust itself through an auger-hole, entered through 
the boat’s side at one place, and peeped out at another, catching numer- 
ous spiders and other insects all the while.” 
The food of the Carolina Wren consists wholly of insects of vari- 
ous kinds — caterpillars, beetles, etc. ; and, like all of its tribe, it is an 
exceedingly beneficial bird, fully meriting the protection usually accorded 
to Wrens by all except the house-cat, which is their mortal enemy. 
Audubon mentions that “of the many kinds of insects which they 
destroy several are of an aquatic nature, and are procured by them whilst 
creeping about the masses of drifted wood.” They 
Hunting may °ft en be seen scrambling about the trunks of 
trees, searching for insects and their hidden eggs or 
young in the crevices of the bark. 
I was delighted one day, several years ago, to hear a subdued song 
apparently coming from my small yard in the city. I thought at first 
that some neighbor had a caged Cardinal, but, upon investigating, I found 
a Carolina Wren exploring my wild-flower bed, and occasionally indulg- 
ing in a subdued whisper-song. All day long I tried to protect him from 
the cats, which were intent upon stalking him from the neighboring yards, 
but which were kept ofif to a great extent by my chicken-wire addition to 
the fences. I trust that he departed in safety, although I knew that a few 
days previously the cats had deprived a visiting House Wren of his tail, 
and rendered him so strikingly like the Winter Wren that I fear he may 
have been made the occasion of a rather startling “record” of the latter 
species by some enthusiastic young student. 
Classification and Distribution 
The Carolina Wren belongs to the Order Passeres, Suborder O seines, and 
Family Troglodytidce. It is to be found in the breeding-season throughout the 
whole United States east of the Plains and south of about the 41 st parallel of 
latitude — casually further north ; and it remains through the winter in all except 
the northern border of this area. A larger and darker variety in southern Florida 
is named the subspecies T. 1. miamensis; and another subspecies ( T . 1. lomita ) 
inhabits southwestern Texas and northern Mexico. 
This and other Educational. Leaflets are for sale, at 5 cents each, by the National Association of 
Audubon Societies, 1974 Broadway, New York City. Lists given on request. 
