RENTED FOR THE SUMMER
V
THE WRENS’ APARTMENT HOUSE
A four-room house which had been sent to me was very much liked by a pair of wrens. Again their lively, rippling notes filled the air, as these wrens went from room to room of this “apartment house,” as I called it. It was three days before they made up their minds which room they liked best.
Then they brought little twigs and bits of rag, and leaves, and other things, and poked them into one of the rooms. It was as good as saying, “We will take this apartment for the summer.”
Some English sparrows wanted that same room. We always shooed them away, of course, if we could without frightening the other birds. The wrens jabbered and hissed at the sparrows, and stayed, pecking them and being pecked by them. There were four sparrows and only the two wrens; so the poor little wrens finally gave up and went away.
But, try as they would, the sparrows could not get inside of the house. After a while, they, too, went away. Then the wrens returned. It seemed as if they had been watching for the chance.
The wrens soon fetched more twigs, some of them several inches long. They poked them in as far as they would go; then went inside and pulled them in as well as they could. But some of the longest ones remained partly outside and so blocked the entrance to any birds except the tiny wrens.
Again the English sparrows came and, although they couldn’t even get their heads in now, still they bothered the wrens. They couldn’t have that room themselves, and they didn’t want anybody else to have it.
With such a mean spirit is it any wonder that nobody likes these birds? I cannot bear to call them sparrows any more, because so many good birds go by that name, and are therefore in danger of being disliked. Or, I wish that all the good sparrows could have a different name, and let the English sparrow alone keep the name he has dishonored.
The boy has told me that, to keep English sparrows from increasing around his place, he destroys their eggs wherever he can find them. He said that one pair of sparrows seemed to blame the bluebirds for it, and in revenge destroyed the bluebirds’ nest.