144 
WINTER WREN. 
species, in any European publication. Even some of our own 
naturalists seem to have confounded it with another very 
different bird, the Marsh Wren, * which arrives in Pennsylvania 
from the south in May, builds a globular or pitcher-shaped 
nest, which it suspends among the rushes and bushes by the 
river side, lays five or six eggs of a dark fawn colour, and departs 
again in September. But the colours and markings of that bird 
are very unlike those of the Winter Wren, and its song alto- 
gether different. The circumstance of the one arriving from the 
north as the other returns to the south, and vice versa, with some 
general resemblance between the two, may have occasioned 
this mistake. They, however, not only breed in different 
regions, but belong to different genera, the Marsh Wren being 
decisively a species of Certhia , and the Winter Wren a true 
Motacilla. Indeed we have no less than five species of these 
birds in Pennsylvania, that, by a superficial observer, would be 
taken for one and the same ; but between each of which nature 
has drawn strong, discriminating, and indelible lines of sepa- 
ration. These will be pointed out in their proper places. 
If this bird, as some suppose, retires only to the upper 
regions of the country, and mountainous forests, to breed, as 
is the case with some others, it will account for his early and 
frequent residence along the Atlantic coast during the severest f 
winters ; though I rather suspect that he proceeds considerably 
to the northward; as the Snow Bird, ( F 1 Hudsonia ,) which 
arrives about the same time with the Winter Wren, does not 
even breed at Hudson’s Bay, but passes that settlement in 
June, on his way to the northward ; how much farther is 
unknown. 
The length of the Winter Wren is three inches and a half, 
breadth, five inches; the upper parts are of a general dark 
brown, crossed with transverse touches of black, except the 
upper parts of the head and neck, which are plain ; the black 
spots on the back terminate in minute points of dull white ; 
the first row of wing-coverts is also marked with specks of 
* See Professor Barton’s observations on this subject, under the article 
Motacilla troglodytes'? Fragments , &c. p. 18; Ibid. p. 12. 
