Length -- 4 to 4.5 inches. About one-third smaller than the
English sparrow. Apparently only half the size.
Male and Female -- Cinnamon-brown above, with numerous short,
dusky bars. Head and neck without markings. Underneath rusty,
dimly and finely barred with dark brown. Tail short.
Range -- United States, east and west, and from North Carolina to
the Fur Countries
Migrations -- October, April. Summer resident. Commonly a winter
resident in the South and Middle States only.
It all too rarely happens that we see this tiny mouse-like wren in summer,
unless we come upon him suddenly and overtake him unawares as he creeps shyly
over the mossy logs or runs literally "like a flash" under the fern and
through the tangled underbrush of the deep, cool woods. His presence there is
far more likely to be detected by the ear than the eye.
Throughout the nesting season music fairly pours from his tiny throat; it
bubbles up like champagne; it gushes forth in a lyrical torrent and overflows
into every nook of the forest, that seems entirely pervaded by his song. While
music is everywhere, it apparently comes from no particular point, and, search
as you may, the tiny singer still eludes, exasperates, and yet entrances.
If by accident you discover him balancing on a swaying twig, never far from
the ground, with his comical little tail erect, or more likely pointing
towards his head, what a pert, saucy minstrel he is! You are lost in amazement
that so much music could come from a throat so tiny.
Comparatively few of his admirers, however, hear the exquisite notes of this
little brown wood-sprite, for after the nesting season is over he finds little
to call them forth during the bleak, snowy winter months, when in the Middle
and Southern States he may properly be called a neighbor. Sharp hunger, rather
than natural boldness, drives him near the homes of men, where he appears just
as the house wren departs for the South. With a forced confidence in man that
is almost pathetic in a bird that loves the forest as he does, he picks up
whatever lies about the house or barn in the shape of food-crumbs from the
kitchen door, a morsel from the dog's plate, a little seed in the barn-yard,
happily rewarded if he can find a spider lurking in some sheltered place to
give a flavor to the unrelished grain. Now he becomes almost tame, but we feel
it is only because he must be.
The spot that decided preference leads him to, either winter or summer, is
beside a bubbling spring. In the moss that grows near it the nest is placed in
early summer, nearly always roofed over and entered from the side, in true
wren-fashion; and as the young fledglings emerge from the creamy-white eggs,
almost the first lesson they receive from their devoted little parents is in
the fine art of bathing. Even in winter weather, when the wren has to stand on
a rim of ice, he will duck and splash his diminutive body. It is recorded of a
certain little individual that he was wont to dive through the icy water on a
December day. Evidently the wrens, as a family, are not far removed in the
evolutionary scale from true water-birds.