HOUSE WREN 
When the male house wren returns north in spring, he begins to sing in 
a musical frenzy which sets him trembling in every fibre. Then suddenly 
he stops and sets about the work of home-making. 
He becomes feverishly active, collecting sticks with which he fills 
all the nesting sites in the vicinity. His favorite nesting spots are wood¬ 
pecker holes, hollow trees, baskets, and man-made bird houses. By this time 
the females have arrived, and he looks around for a mate. 
The female of the species is shrewish, perhaps because of the male’s 
incurable disorder. Usually her first act is to throw all the sticks out of 
the nesting site she chooses. The male then goes on with his singing, while 
the female builds the actual nest, lining the twigs and branches with feathers, 
cloth or cocoons. 
Wrens are active and nervous little birds, constantly hopping and 
bobbing about, and they are highly belligerent despite their small size. 
Their food consists chiefly of insects, but they also eat the eggs of other 
birds. When there is nothing upon which they can expend their irrepressible 
energy, they fight among themselves or build extra nests. Sometimes a male 
will build a rough, uncouth nest near the tidy one occupied by his mate; 
and often a male who has failed to secure a mate occupies his enforced 
leisure with nest-building for nest-building’s sake. 
Despite their social irregularities, wrens are devoted parents. They 
protect their young and feed them constantly, sometimes once every two or 
three minutes. In some cases wrens mate for life, but often a male will 
abandon his brooding mate and nest with another female nearby. The 
female, after hatching out her six to eight eggs, may leave the care of her 
nestlings to her mate and fly away with a new lover. Occasionally a male 
mates with two females, dividing his attentions between the two and sing¬ 
ing diplomatically where both females can hear him. 
Wrens are useful to farmers as destroyers of insect pests. Their chief 
enemies are cats, blue jays, crows, squirrels and bad weather. 
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