Ornithological biography, Vol. 1 (of 5)

by John James Audubon

The blue of the female is much duller. The band on the upper part of the breast is of dull greyish blue and light red intermixed; below this is a narrow band of white, and across the middle of the breast a broad band of yellowish-red, of which colour also are the sides. The rest of the under parts are white, tinged with red.

THE GREAT CAROLINA WREN.

Troglodytes ludovicianus, Ch. Bonaparte.
PLATE LXXVIII. Male and Female.

Permit me to suggest, kind reader, that I think it always best to see and judge of individuals in their own country. There independence and ease are more commonly met with, and the observer is less attended to. This being admitted, I shall give you the history and life of the Great Carolina Wren, as studied in the State of Louisiana, where that bird is a constant resident.

Its flight is performed by short flappings of the wings, the concave under surfaces of which occasion a low rustling, as the bird moves to the distance of a few steps only at each start. It is accompanied by violent jerks of the tail and body, and is by no means graceful. In this manner the Carolina Wren moves from one fence-rail to another, from log to log, up and down among the low branches of bushes, piles of wood, and decayed roots of prostrate trees, or between the stalks of canes. Its tail is almost constantly erect, and before it starts to make the least flight or leap, it uses a quick motion, which brings its body almost into contact with the object on which it stands, and then springs from its legs. All this is accompanied with a strong chirr-up, uttered as if the bird were in an angry mood, and repeated at short intervals.

The quickness of the motions of this active little bird is fully equal to that of the mouse. Like the latter it appears and is out of sight in a moment, peeps into a crevice, passes rapidly through it, and shews itself at a different place the next instant. When satiated with food, or fatigued with these multiplied exertions, the little fellow stops, droops its tail, and sings with great energy a short ditty something resembling the words come-to-me, come-to-me, repeated several times in quick succession, so loud, and yet so mellow, that it is always agreeable to listen to them. During spring, these notes are heard from all parts of the plantations, the damp woods, the swamps, the sides of creeks and rivers, as well as from the barns, the stables and the piles of wood, within a few yards of the house. I have frequently heard these Wrens singing from the roof of an abandoned flat-boat, fastened to the shore, a small distance below the city of New Orleans. When its song was finished, the bird went on creeping from one board to another, thrust itself through an auger-hole, entered through the boat's side at one place, and peeped out at another, catching numerous spiders and other insects all the while. It sometimes ascends to the higher branches of a tree of moderate size, by climbing along a grape-vine, searching diligently amongst the leaves and in the chinks of the bark, alighting sidewise against the trunk, and moving like a true Creeper. It possesses the power of creeping and of hopping in a nearly equal degree. The latter kind of motion it employs when nearer the ground, and among piles of drifted timber. So fond is this bird of the immediate neighbourhood of water, that it would be next to impossible to walk along the shore of any of the islands of the Mississippi, from the mouth of the Ohio to New Orleans, without observing several on each island.

Amongst the many species of insects which they destroy, several are of an aquatic nature, and are procured by them whilst creeping about the masses of drifted wood. Their chirr-up and come-to-me come-to-me seldom cease for more than fifteen or twenty minutes at a time, commencing with the first glimpse of day, and continuing sometimes after sunset.

The nest of the Carolina Wren is usually placed in a hole in some low decayed tree, or in a fence-stake, sometimes even in the stable, barn or coach-house, should it there find a place suitable for its reception. I have found some not more than two feet from the ground, in the stump of a tree that had long before been felled by the axe. The materials employed in its construction are hay, grasses, leaves, feathers, and horse-hair, or the dry fibres of the Spanish moss; the feathers, hair or moss forming the lining, the coarse materials the outer parts. When the hole is sufficiently large, the nest is not unfrequently five or six inches in depth, although only just wide enough to admit one of the birds at a time. The number of eggs is from five to eight. They are of a broad oval form, greyish-white, sprinkled with reddish-brown. Whilst at Oakley, the residence of my friend James Perrie, Esq. near Bayou Sara, I discovered that one of these birds was in the habit of roosting in a Wood Thrush's nest that was placed on a low horizontal branch, and had been filled with leaves that had fallen during the autumn. It was in the habit of thrusting his body beneath the leaves, and I doubt not found the place very comfortable.

They usually raise two, sometimes three broods in a season. The young soon come out from the nest, and in a few days after creep and hop about with as much nimbleness as the old ones. Their plumage undergoes no change, merely becoming firmer in the colouring.

Many of these birds are destroyed by Weasels and Minxes. It is, notwithstanding, one of the most common birds which we have as resident in Louisiana. They ascend along the shores of the Mississippi as high as the Missouri River, and along the Ohio nearly to Pittsburgh, although they do not occur in great numbers in the neighbourhood of that city. They are common in Georgia, the Carolinas, Kentucky, Ohio and Indiana. A few are to be seen along the Atlantic shores as far as Pennsylvania and New Jersey. In the latter State I have found its nest, near a swamp, a few miles from Philadelphia. I never observed them farther to the eastward.