GREAT CAROLINA WREN. 
117 
hopping in a nearly equal degree. The latter kind of motion it employs 
when nearer the ground, and among piles of drifted timber. So fond is this 
bird of the immediate neighbourhood of water, that it would be next to im- 
possible to walk along the shore of any of the islands of the Mississippi, from 
the mouth of the Ohio to New Orleans, without observing several on each 
island. 
Among the many species of insects which they destroy, several are of an 
aquatic nature, and are procured by them whilst creeping about the masses 
of drifted wood. Their chirr-up and come-to-me, come-to-me, seldom cease 
for more than fifteen or twenty minutes at a time, commencing with the first 
glimpse of day, and continuing sometimes after sunset. 
The nest of the Carolina Wren is usually placed in a hole in some low 
decayed tree, or in a fence-stake, sometimes even in the stable, barn, or 
coach-house, should it there find a place suitable for its reception. I have 
found some not more than two feet from the ground, in the stump of a tree 
that had long before been felled by the axe. The materials employed in its 
construction are hay, grasses, leaves, feathers, and horse-hair, or the dry 
fibres of the Spanish moss ; the feathers, hair or moss forming the lining, the 
coarse materials the outer parts. When the hole is sufficiently large, the 
nest is not unfrequently five or six inches in depth, although only just wide 
enough to admit one of the birds at a time. The number of eggs is from 
five to eight. They are of a broad oval form, greyish-white, sprinkled with 
reddish-brown. Whilst at Oakley, the residence of my friend James Per- 
rie, Esq., near Bayou Sara, I discovered that one of these birds was in the 
habit of roosting in a Wood Thrush’s nest that was placed on a low horizon- 
tal branch, and had been filled with leaves that had fallen during the autumn. 
It was in the habit of thrusting his body beneath the leaves, and I doubt not 
found the place very comfortable. 
They usually raise two, sometimes three broods in a season. The young 
soon come out from the nest, and in a few days after creep and hop about 
with as much nimbleness as the old ones. Their plumage undergoes no 
change, merely becoming firmer in the colouring. 
Many of these birds are destroyed by weasels and minxes. It is, notwith- 
standing, one of the most common birds which we have as residents in Loui- 
siana. They ascend along the shores of the Mississippi as high as the 
Missouri river, and along the Ohio nearly to Pittsburgh, although they do not 
occur in great numbers in the neighbourhood of that city. They are com- 
mon in Georgia, the Carolinas, Kentucky, Ohio, and Indiana. A few are to 
be seen along the Atlantic shores as far as Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and 
New York. In New Jersey I have found its nest, near a swamp, a few 
miles from Philadelphia. I never observed them farther to the eastward. 
Vol. II. 20 
