46 THE AUDUBON BULTLE Tis 

known there twenty to thirty years earlier. In speaking of former years 
he said, ‘House Wrens were reported by ornithologists as breeding now 
and then in other portions of the state and some few may have been 
present in my region, but as a summer resident the bird was certainly 
rare in the vicinity of Delavan. Now I found it, in July, one of the most 
conspicuous and generally distributed of town birds.”” With only one 
change, that of {he town, this would read true of every place in the Upper 
Mississippi Valley, it is confidently believed. When a nesting area be- 
comes overcrowded with certain species, as for example the Flicker or 
the Brown Thrasher, they fight among themselves (each within the circle 
of its own species), and break up nests by destroying the eggs. This sort 
of race suicide may be continued for several seasons until overcrowding 
ceases and normal life once more holds sway. No such happy adjust- 
ment happens among the House Wrens. In this species it is the females 
that fight until one is killed, thus leaving an excess of males. Among a 
dozen of the species it has been found that there are two to four males 
that can not find mates. Never has it been discovered that these were 
the more destructive of the two classes of males, it may be the other 
way about; that the evil spirit is stirred in them by the presence of the 
unmated males ready to take away their partners. Whatever is the 
true explanation it is a matter of belief that the destructive habit has 
increased disproportionately with the increase of the species. 
The reason for this great increase must be clear to every one. It is 
the result of the campaign for erecting boxes for wrens; boxes with small 
openings that protected the wrens from their natural enemiés and en- 
abled them to breed in undue numbers. That the species needs no such 
protection, but survives in plentiful numbers in the remote portions 
of its breeding range is another fact proved by the regional lists printed 
in the bird magazines. How many persons have searched for such 
records? Those who have done so, have read of the House Wren having 
been found breeding “‘abundantly” in the wild portions of Pennsylvania 
and of West Virginia, in the mountains of Virginia,in the northern woods 
of Michigan and Wisconsin, in South Dakota, Saskatchewan, Alberta, 
British Columbia, Washington, Montana, Colorado, and in the higher 
altitudes of New Mexico and Arizona, certainly enough instances to 
prove that this bird needs no special protection. 
This protection has been given by some unwittingly, by others ob- 
stinately, those who refused to believe the emphatic warnings of Robert 
Ridgway and Otto Widmann spoken twenty years ago. An example of 
one open-minded searcher for truth was afforded by a conscientious 
and learned ornithologist, who could not quite accept the words of: Mr. 
Widmann, hence set the men of his state to seeking proof. How long they 
sought was not stated, but it was considerably less than seven years. 
It calls up the picture of a woman bent on vindicating her wren, who 
takes her tatting, sits in the shade of her apple tree in sight of her wren- 
