‘208 
MARSH WREN. 
!■ 
MARSH WREN. — CERTHIA PALUSTRIS. 
Plate XII. Fig. 4. 
Lath. Syn. Suppl. p. 244 Motacilla palustris (regul us minor,) JBartram, p. 291. 
Peale's Museum , No. 7282. 
I 
TROGL OD YTES PAL USTRIS. — Bonaparte. 
Troglodytes palustris, Bonap. Synop. p. 93. — The Marsh Wren, Aud. pi. 100, 
Orn. Biog. i. p. 500 North. Zool. ii. p. 319. 
This obscure but spirited little species lias been almost 
overlooked by the naturalists of Europe, as well as by those 
of its own country. The singular attitude in which it is 
represented will be recognized, by those acquainted with its 
manners, as one of its most common and favourite ones, while 
skipping through among the reeds and rushes. The Marsh 
Wren arrives in Pennsylvania about the middle of May, or as 
soon as the reeds and a species of nymphea, usually called 
splatter-docks, which grow in great luxuriance along the tide 
water of our rivers, are sufficiently high to shelter it. To 
such places it almost wholly limits its excursions, seldom ven- 
turing far from the river. Its food consists of flying insects, 
and their larvae, and a species of green grasshoppers that inhabit 
the reeds. As to its notes, it would be mere burlesque to call 
them by the name of song. Standing on the reedy borders of 
the Schuylkill or Delaware, in the month of June, you hear a 
low, crackling sound, something similar to that produced by 
air bubbles forcing their way through mud or boggy ground 
when trod upon ; this is the song of the Marsh Wren. But 
as, among the human race, it is not given to one man to excel 
in every thing, and yet each, perhaps, has something peculiarly 
his own ; so, among birds, we find a like distribution of talents 
and peculiarities. The little bird now before us, if deficient 
and contemptible in singing, excels in the art of design, and 
constructs a nest, which, in durability, warmth, and conve- 
nience, is scarcely inferior to one, and far superior to many, of 
