"Uncle Horace, do, please, come out here and look. It is just too funny. When papa was here last summer he left a pair of old boots, and this spring some one threw them out on the pile of rails behind the barn. I was around there a few minutes ago, and I found that two little birds had gone into one of the boots and built a nest there. I looked in, and I saw the nest and three eggs. Do come out and tell me what birds they are. Just now one of them scolded at me very much because he thought I went too close to the boot."
"I think I can tell you before going what the bird is, for there is only one which would fairly be apt to adopt the boot as a place for housekeeping. The birds are probably wrens, Bennie, but we will go and see."
As we were passing around toward the rear of the barn I heard, sure enough, the song of a wren from the branches of a cherry-tree which we passed, and when we reached the "boot," out flew the mate of the songster, and without going further than the nearest fence post, she stopped and began to scold us at a furious rate.
"That is just the way she went on before, Uncle Horace. What a spiteful little thing she is!"
"Oh no, not spiteful, Bennie; she is only standing up for her rights. She evidently thinks that the boot belongs to her, and that we have no business here."
"But is it not queer that they should take such a place for their nest? An old boot!"
"No, it is not queer, Ben; it is precisely the sort of thing you might expect. When you mentioned the place of the nest, I felt at once tolerably sure that a pair of wrens must be the builders, for they seem to have a special fancy for odd places. When we go into the house again I will show you Mr. Audubon's plate of this species, and you will see that he represents them as having built their nest in an old torn hat which had been hung on a branch of a tree. I saw a wren's nest once in a pickle jar, and at another time a pair had taken possession of a tomato can which some boys had hung on a fence stake and used as a mark for shooting till it was full of shot-holes. They often go into empty boxes, and it is curious how much work they will do in filling up a box when it is too large for their little nest. I recollect one case where a pair of wrens took a fancy to a soap box which was more than a foot long, and rather than leave any part of it vacant they actually worked away till they had piled grass, etc., into it clear down to the very hole by which they entered, and there they built their nest right down close to the entrance. These were all American wrens; but here is a beautiful drawing of another species never seen in this country."
"Oh, Uncle Horace, what a cunning little fellow, one up above and one looking out of that hole in the nest! You say he never comes to this country; where does he live, then?"
"That drawing represents the common wren of England and of France, Bennie. In fact, the bird is found in most parts of southern and western Europe, and is just as familiar in its habit of coming about houses there as our wren is here. They all of them seem to like the idea of being where people are, and yet they are timid and retiring little things after all. The genus to which they belong is called in the books Troglodytes, which you must pronounce in four syllables, not three. It sounds like a harsh name for such a delicate bird; it means a dweller in caves."