The Common 
Wren. 
THE BIRD WORLD 
(156) 
one illustrated in the photograph, al¬ 
though built against the wall of a house 
covered with the large-leaved “ Irish 77 
ivy, is entirely composed, externally, of 
dead fern leaves, and was, therefore, a 
conspicuous brown object amongst the 
green. Very often, however, the nest 
assimilates so closely with its surround¬ 
ings as to be with difficulty distinguished. 
Although he has at one time and 
another examined a large number of 
Wrens’ nests, the writer has never seen 
one that contained more than nine eggs, 
and should consider seven to be about 
the average; double that number have, 
however, been reported by many people 
-—in one case, at least, as many as 
twenty-two ! It must be well-nigh im¬ 
possible for the bird to hatch anything 
like this number, one would suppose^ 
and even if the nest was large enough to 
hold the eggs comfortably it certainly 
would not be capable of containing the 
young when they were as much as half- 
grown, and it would be interesting to 
know what really happens in the case of 
these abnormally large broods. 
A more useful inmate of a greenhouse 
than a Wren (or some other equally 
small warbler) it would be difficult to 
imagine. One will entirely clear every 
plant in a large house of “ green fly 77 in 
the course of a few days, and will very 
quickly exterminate every description of 
insect life. It will also hunt out and 
devour all spiders, wood-lice, et hoc 
genus omne , and if kindly treated will 
soon become wonderfully tame. It will 
live upon a variety of prepared food, 
always greatly appreciating insects of 
almost any kind, and will not refuse a 
small worm or an occasional bit of flesh 
—either cooked or raw. Speaking of 
the slightly larger and dark-coloured 
form of Wren found in the Faroe Islands 
known as Troglodytes borealis , and with 
which the birds found in Shetland have 
been supposed by some authors to be 
identical, Landt says that in Feroese it 
is known as musa brouir , or the mouse’s 
brother, because it is so like a mouse, 
both in size and colour, and, like the 
mouse, creeps in through the chinks in 
the wind-houses and feasts on the meat 
dried for winter use. The Wren found 
in St. Kilda, and now generally recog¬ 
nised as a distinct race, under the name 
of T. hortensis, is also noticeably larger 
than our common bird, especially in its 
bill and legs, and is slightly paler in 
colour, with the bars on the feathers- 
more clearly marked. These distinc¬ 
tions, however, are at best little more 
than questions of degree, specimens from 
some of the most treeless parts of the 
mainland of Scotland approaching them 
very closely in point of size, while others 
are scarcely perceptibly different in 
colour and markings. 
Quarrelsome Travellers. 
But though both in summer and! 
winter Meadow Pipits are among the 
commonest objects of our country-side, 
there is an interval, from about the 
middle of August to the middle of 
September, when we appear to have 
none at all; and then suddenly comes a 
day when, with a strong north wind 
blowing, certain sheltered slopes are 
covered with a multitude of Meadow 
Pipits. The air is filled with their pip¬ 
ing, and they may be seen chasing each 
other in every direction. They have 
evidently come from oversea with the 
north wind, and have alighted in the 
first sheltered but open space which they 
found. Their quarrelsomeness forbids, 
however, that they should remain in- 
company. Unlike the Skylarks, natur¬ 
ally as quarrelsome as birds can be, the 
migrating Meadow Pipits cannot afford 
to sink their differences, because they 
feed only upon insect food all the 
winter. The Skylarks’ stouter diges¬ 
tions enable them to picnic comfortably 
upon a field of clover. When the 
weather is hard they will even devour 
rye-grass like the wild geese, or turnip 
leaves like the Woodpigeons; but clover 
seems to be their favourite vegetable, 
and when we have weeks of frosty 
weather, on clover fields that slope to- 
the south, where the midday winter sun 
melts most of the snow away, the far¬ 
mer would almost need a microscope 
sometimes to see where his clover grows. 
