(_Thryothorus ludovicianus_) Wren family
_Called also_: MOCKING WREN
_Length_--6 inches. Just a trifle smaller than the English sparrow.
_Male and Female_--Chestnut-brown above. A whitish streak,
beginning at base of bill, passes through the eye to the nape
of the neck. Throat whitish. Under parts light buff-brown.
Wings and tail finely barred with dark.
_Range_--United States, from Gulf to northern Illinois and
southern New England.
_Migrations_--A common resident except at northern boundary of
range, where it is a summer visitor.
This largest of the wrens appears to be the embodiment of the entire
family characteristics: it is exceedingly active, nervous, and easily
excited, quick-tempered, full of curiosity, peeping into every hole
and corner it passes, short of flight as it is of wing, inseparable
from its mate till parted by death, and a gushing lyrical songster
that only death itself can silence. It also has the wren-like
preference for a nest that is roofed over, but not too near the homes
of men.
Undergrowths near water, brush heaps, rocky bits of woodland, are
favorite resorts. The Carolina wren decidedly objects to being stared
at, and likes to dart out of sight in the midst of the underbrush in a
twinkling while the opera-glasses are being focussed.
To let off some of his superfluous vivacity, Nature has provided him
with two safety-valves: one is his voice, another is his tail. With
the latter he gesticulates in a manner so expressive that it seems to
be a certain index to what is passing in his busy little
brain--drooping it, after the habit of the catbird, when he becomes
limp with the emotion of his love-song, or holding it erect as, alert
and inquisitive, he peers at the impudent intruder in the thicket
below his perch.
But it is his joyous, melodious, bubbling song that is his chief
fascination. He has so great a variety of strains that many people
have thought that he learned them from other birds, and so have called
him what many ornithologists declare that he is not--a mocking wren.
And he is one of the few birds that sing at night--not in his sleep or
only by moonlight, but even in the total darkness, just before dawn,
he gives us the same wide-awake song that entrances us by day.