WRENS. 
421 
October last, I observed a busy pair of these little birds, for some 
time, in a garden in the city of Boston ; they kept up a perpetual 
mutual call, in a querulous note like Chicadees, and had the crown 
simply orange-yellow. They pursued their eager search for eggs and 
dormant larvae of insects, without taking any alarm at my near ap- 
proach. On striking the tree, on which they are, sharply with a 
stick or stone, these little timid birds have been found to drop down 
dead. 
My friend, Mr. C. Pickering,’ informs me, that in the European 
specimen in the Philadelphia Museum (apparently a young bird) the 
bright colors of the crest are not very visible, and that the black ex- 
ternal band seems to be mixed with white feathers ; there is also 
a tint of yellow on the sides of the neck and back, brighter towards 
the breast, which is not at all observable on the American speci- 
mens, of either sex. The bill is likewise longer and more slender 
than in our R. tricolor. 
WRENS. (Troglodytes.) 
In these birds the bill is slender, subulate, somewhat arched and 
elongated, also acute, compressed, and without notch ; mandibles 
equal. Nostrils basal, oval, half closed by a membrane. Tongue 
slender, the tip divided into 2 or 3 small bristles. Feet slender, 
tarsus longer than the middle toe ; inner toe free ; posterior with a 
larger nail than the rest. — The wings short, concave, and rounded, 
furnished often with a conspicuous spurious feather or short prima- 
ry ; 3d, 4th, and 5th primaries longest. 
Th e female and young hardly differ in plumage from the adult 
male. The moult is annual. The plumage thick and long, is 
always composed of sombre colors. The body is roundish, and the 
tail almost constantly erected. They are small musical birds, active, 
courageous, and capricious in their movements, almost always hid in 
thickets and bushes, keeping near the ground, to which they often 
descend to forage for worms and insects, and showing a fondness for 
prying into holes and dark places, as well as among logs, &c., where 
they more particularly surprise their prey of spiders and moths. The 
nest is constructed with much art, and the eggs are commonly nu- 
merous. 
36 
