Homes Without Hands: Being a Description of the Habitations of Animals, Classed According to Their Principle of Construction

ANOTHER of our feathered dome-builders is the common Wren (Troglodytes vulgaris). The form and coloring of this bird are too well known to need description, and we shall therefore pass at once to its mode of nesting.

The Wren is rather peculiar in its method of constructing the nest, for, though it can build a dome when there is need for it, and generally does so, it does not always choose to take so much trouble, but contents itself with an open nest arched over by a natural dome. Wherever it can find a convenient cavity, it will make its nest therein, building either no dome at all, or one of very flimsy construction, and such nests can generally be found in the holes of ivy-covered walls, under eaves, or among the thickly-growing branches of fir-trees.

During the time when the Wren is building its nest, its loud, cheerful voice is heard in full perfection, and so full and powerful are its tones that the tiny bird seems hardly able to produce them. It is but a short song, and is little varied, the bird repeating nearly the same melody time after time within a few minutes.

The long-drawn song of the nightingale, or the mellow notes of the thrush, are beyond the power of the Wren, but there are few birds whose song is more enlivening, or which add so much to the pleasure of a country walk. Besides the more formal song, the Wren has a pretty little monosyllabic chirp, which it utters as it pops about the hedges with its peculiar movements, dropping and ascending again with restless activity. The bird is so bold, too, that it will perch on a branch or a paling within a yard or two of the observer, and pour forth its bright song without displaying the least alarm.

As to the materials of the nest, the bird is in no way fastidious, and generally seems to regard quantity rather than quality. Grasses of various kinds usually form the bulk of the nest, together with mosses, lichens, and similar substances. Withered leaves are generally worked into the nest, and I have more than once found specimens which were almost wholly composed of leaves. The size of the nest is wonderfully large when the dimensions of the tiny architect are taken into consideration, and, however large may be the hole in which the Wren makes its nest, it is nearly filled with the mass of grass, leaves, and wool which the Wren has conveyed into it. The interior of the nest is always warmly lined, sometimes with feathers and sometimes with hair, and in the lining are generally some six or eight little eggs, nearly white, and covered with very minute red specks.

Probably the very large mass of material is employed in order to defend so small a bird from the inclemency of the season, for the Wren stays with us throughout the year, and in the winter time resides in the same nest which was used as a breeding-place during the summer. If an old ivy-covered wall, or a haystack, or an old house, be examined at night, there will often be found certain pseudo-nests in which the Wren hides itself. These curious edifices are raised by the Wren, though they are never used for the legitimate object of a nest, and the reason of their construction is not very evident. In all probability they are the work of young and inexperienced nest-builders, who begin to make their home, and when they have proceeded with their work, find that the locality is unsuitable, and that they must find another spot. The juvenile bird-nester is often woefully disappointed by finding these nests, especially if he finds three or four in a single wall or stack, as is not unfrequently the case.

As is the case with the redbreast and one or two of our more familiar birds, the Wren will sometimes enter houses and build its nest in curtains, on shelves, and similar localities, while the interior of a disused green-house or stable-loft is nearly sure to be tenanted by a Wren and its little brood.

An allied bird, the House Wren of Northern America (Troglodytes ædon), has very much the same habits, and will generally take possession of any box that is nailed on a wall or a post where a cat can not reach it. On account of, probably, the bird-eating snakes, which are plentiful in that country, the materials of the nest are much stronger than in England, and consist generally of twigs and sticks on the exterior and feathers within. Wilson mentions that on a hot June day, a mower happened to hang up his coat in a shed, and left it there for two or three days. When he removed it from the nail on which it had hung, and was putting it on, he found one of the sleeves quite choked up with sticks, grass, and feathers, being the completed nest of a House Wren. The unfortunate little architects were very angry with the man for disturbing their home, and followed him out of the shed, scolding him for the damage which he had unwittingly done to their newly-finished home.

Happily for the little bird, the popular feeling is in favor of its preservation, and in many a garden there is a box for the House Wren carefully mounted on a pole like one of our barrel pigeon-cotes, and each box having only a little hole by way of entrance, so that no larger and more powerful bird should be able to usurp the comfortable little house. In default of a box, however, the House Wren will put up with very poor accommodation, and make its nest in an old hat nailed under the eaves of a house, or in a flower-pot, or in a hollow cocoa-nut or gourd. There is wisdom as well as kindness in providing a home for the House Wren, for it is one of the insect-eating birds, and when it is thus suited with a house, it remains near the spot, to the manifest advantage of the herbs and fruit.

Of this little bird Wilson gives an interesting anecdote. "A box fixed up in the window of the room where I slept was taken possession of by a pair of Wrens. Already the nest was built and two eggs laid, when one day, the window being open, as well as the room door, the female Wren, venturing too far into the room to reconnoitre, was sprung upon by grimalkin, who had planted herself there for the purpose, and before relief could be given, was destroyed. Curious to see how the survivor would demean himself, I watched him carefully for several days.

"At first he sang with great vivacity for an hour or so, but becoming weary, went off for half an hour; on his return he chanted again as before, went to the top of the house, stable, and weeping-willow, that she might hear him; but, seeing no appearance of her, he returned once more, visited the nest, ventured cautiously into the window, and gazed about with suspicious looks, his voice sinking to a low, melancholy note as he stretched his little neck about in every direction. Returning to the box, he seemed for some minutes at a loss what to do, and soon after went off as I thought altogether, for I saw him no more that day.

"Toward the afternoon of the second day he again made his appearance, accompanied by a new female, who seemed exceedingly timorous and shy, and who, after great hesitation, entered the box; at this moment the little widower or bridegroom seemed as if he would warble out his very life with ecstasy of joy. After remaining about half a minute in, they both flew off, but returned in a few minutes, and instantly began to carry out the eggs, feathers, and some of the sticks, supplying the place of the latter with materials of the same sort; and ultimately they succeeded in raising a brood of seven young, all of which escaped in safety."

In this little narrative there are two curious points to be noticed, the one that the eggs already laid were turned out, and the other that the new mistress of the house, with a natural jealousy of her predecessor, rearranged the interior so as to suit her own ideas of good taste.

As the bird is so useful, the proprietors of gardens would be glad to have a number of families in their domains. This plan, however admirable in theory, is found to be impracticable in fact, the quarrelsome nature of the bird enduring no rival. During the building season, the House Wren sings, fights, and builds with equal energy, and drives away birds of three times his size. The woodpecker is obliged to quit so disturbed a spot; the fussy and active titmice yield to the Wren, and even the bluebird itself, which is also a favored inmate of the garden, and is furnished with breeding-boxes, is obliged to retire from the field, and to allow its tiny antagonist the choice of houses.

AUSTRALIA is proverbially a strange land, and it is only in Australia, or perhaps in Madagascar, that we should look for a wren measuring some seventeen inches in height. Such a bird is, however, to be found in Australia, and is known to the natives by the name of BULLEN-BULLEN, and to the Europeans as the Lyre Bird (Menura superba). It is remarkable, by the way, that the genius of the Australian language causes many words to be doubled, so that the natives speak of a well-known Australian marsupial as the devil-devil, and of a domestic servant as Jacky-Jacky.

New South Wales is the chosen country of the Lyre Bird, which is rather local, and affects certain defined boundaries. Its native name is derived from its peculiar cry, and the popular European name is given to the bird on account of the shape of its tail feathers. The two exterior feathers are curved in such a manner that when the whole tail is spread they exactly resemble the horns of an ancient lyre, the place of the strings being taken by a number of slender decomposed feathers which rise from the centre of the tail. When the bird is quietly at rest, the tail-feathers cross each other at the curves, and present a very elegant appearance, though not in the least resembling a lyre. In general shape the bird bears some resemblance to a small turkey, except that the legs are longer and more slender, and that the feet do not resemble those of a gallinaceous bird. It is rather remarkable that the egg presents as curious a mixture of the insessorial and gallinaceous aspects as the bird itself.

The nest of this bird is not at all unlike that of the wren, being very much of the same shape, and domed after a similar fashion. The nest is, however, a very rough piece of architecture, composed almost wholly of twigs, roots, and various sticks, which are interwoven in a very loose, but very ingenious manner, so as to form a structure of tolerable firmness, which can be lifted and even subjected to rough treatment without being broken. At first sight it looks like those heaps of dead twigs which are so common in the birch-tree, but a closer inspection shows that there is a certain regularity in the disposition of the sticks, and that the bird is not without method, though that method be not at first apparent.

So rude a structure as this nest would be unsuitable for the tender young, and therefore the whole of the interior is stuffed full of soft feathers. The nest of an allied species, Albert Lyre Bird (Menura Alberti), is made in a similar manner, except that the materials are almost wholly small and rather long sticks. Specimens of these nests may be seen in the British Museum. Both the birds are very shy, and can not be approached without the greatest caution. Like the gallinaceous birds, to which they bear a strong resemblance, they are fond of scratching large holes in sandy soil, sometimes making them nearly a yard in width and eighteen or twenty inches in depth.