The characteristics of the Winter Wren are those of the whole family. They move with rapidity and precision from place to place, in short, sudden hops and flights, bending downward and keeping their tails erect. They will run under a large root, through a hollow stump or log, or between the interstices of rocks, more in the manner of a mouse than of a bird.
The writer has several times observed these Wrens on the steep sides of Mount Washington, in the month of June, moving about in active unrest, disappearing and reappearing among the broken masses of granite with which these slopes are strewn. This was even in the most thickly wooded portions. Though they evidently had nests in the neighborhood, they could not be discovered. They were unsuspicious, could be approached within a few feet, but uttered querulous complaints if one persisted in searching too long in the places they entered.
This Wren, as I am informed by Mr. Boardman, is a common summer resident near Calais, Me.
Mr. Audubon met with its nest in a thick forest in Pennsylvania. He followed a pair of these birds until they disappeared in the hollow of a protuberance, covered with moss and lichens, resembling the excrescences often seen on forest trees. The aperture was perfectly rounded and quite smooth. He put in his finger and felt the pecking of the bird’s bill and heard its querulous cry. He was obliged to remove the parent bird in order to see the eggs, which were six in number. The parent birds made a great clamor as
he was examining them. The nest was seven inches in length and four and a half in breadth. Its walls were composed of mosses and lichens, and were nearly two inches in thickness. The cavity was very warmly lined with the fur of the American hare and a few soft feathers. Another nest found on the Mohawk, in New York, was similar, but smaller, and built against the side of a rock near its bottom.
Mr. William F. Hall met with the nest and eggs of this bird at Camp Sebois in the central eastern portion of Maine. It was built in an unoccupied log-hut, among the fir-leaves and mosses in a crevice between the logs. It was large and bulky, composed externally of mosses and lined with the fur of hedge-hogs, and the feathers of the spruce partridge and other birds. It was in the shape of a pouch, and the entrance was neatly framed with fine pine sticks. The eggs were six in number, and somewhat resembled those of the Parus atricapillus. The female was seen and fully identified.
In this nest, which measured five and three quarters inches by five in breadth, the size, solidity, and strength, in view of the diminutive proportions of its tiny architect, are quite remarkable. The walls were two inches in thickness and very strongly impacted and interwoven. The cavity was an inch and a quarter wide and four inches deep. Its hemlock framework had been made of green materials, and their strong and agreeable odor pervaded the structure. The eggs measured .65 by .48 of an inch, and were spotted with a bright reddish-brown and a few pale markings of purplish-slate, on a pure white ground. Compared with the eggs of the European Wren their eggs are larger, less oval in shape, and the spots much more marked in their character and distinctness.
Troglodytes parvulus, var. alascensis, Baird.
ALASKA WREN.
Troglodytes alascensis, Baird, Trans. Chicago Acad. Sc. I, ii, 315, pl. xxx, fig. 3, 1869.—Dall & Bannister (Alaska).—Finsch, Ornith. N. W. Amerikas, 1872, 30.