(_Troglodytes aA"don_) Wren family
(Illustration facing p. 118)
_Length_--4.5 to 5 inches. Actually about one-fourth smaller
than the English sparrow; apparently only half as large
because of its erect tail.
_Male and Female_--Upper parts cinnamon-brown. Deepest shade
on head and neck; lightest above tail, which is more rufous.
Back has obscure, dusky bars; wings and tail are finely
barred. Underneath whitish, with grayish-brown wash and faint
bands most prominent on sides.
_Range_--North America, from Manitoba to the Gulf. Most common
in the United States, from the Mississippi eastward. Winters
south of the Carolinas.
_Migrations_--April. October. Common summer resident.
Early some morning in April there will go off under your window that
most delightful of all alarm-clocks--the tiny, friendly house wren,
just returned from a long visit south. Like some little mountain
spring that, having been imprisoned by winter ice, now bubbles up in
the spring sunshine, and goes rippling along over the pebbles,
tumbling over itself in merry cascades, so this little wren's song
bubbles, ripples, cascades in a miniature torrent of ecstasy.
Year after year these birds return to the same nesting places: a box
set up against the house, a crevice in the barn, a niche under the
eaves; but once home, always home to them. The nest is kept
scrupulously clean; the house-cleaning, like the house-building and
renovating, being accompanied by the cheeriest of songs, that makes
the bird fairly tremble by its intensity. But however angelic the
voice of the house wren, its temper can put to flight even the English
sparrow. Need description go further?
Six to eight minutely speckled, flesh-colored eggs suffice to keep the
nervous, irritable parents in a state bordering on frenzy whenever
another bird comes near their habitation. With tail erect and head
alert, the father mounts on guard, singing a perfect ecstasy of love
to his silent little mate, that sits upon the nest if no danger
threatens; but both rush with passionate malice upon the first
intruder, for it must be admitted that Jenny wren is a sad shrew.
While the little family is being reared, or, indeed, at any time, no
one is wise enough to estimate the millions of tiny insects from the
garden that find their way into the tireless bills of these wrens.
It is often said that the house wren remains at the north all the
year, which, though not a fact, is easily accounted for by the coming
of the winter wrens just as the others migrate in the autumn, and by
their return to Canada when Jenny wren makes up her feather-bed under
the eaves in the spring.