To let off some of his superfluous
vivacity, Nature has provided him with two safety-valves: one is his voice,
another is his tail. With the latter he gesticulates in a manner so expressive
that it seems to be a certain index to what is passing in his busy little
brain -- drooping it, after the habit of the catbird, when he becomes limp
with the emotion of his love-song, or holding it erect as, alert and
inquisitive, he peers at the impudent intruder in the thicket below his perch.
But it is his joyous, melodious, bubbling song that is his chief fascination.
He has so great a variety of strains that many people have thought that he
learned them from other birds, and so have called him what many ornithologists
declare that he is not -- a mocking wren. And he is one of the few birds that
sing at night -- not in his sleep or only by moonlight, but even in the total
darkness, just before dawn, he gives us the same wide-awake song that
entrances us by day.
WINTER WREN (Troglodytes biemalis) Wren family
Length -- 4 to 4.5 inches. About one-third smaller than the
English sparrow. Apparently only half the size.
Male and Female -- Cinnamon-brown above, with numerous short,
dusky bars. Head and neck without markings. Underneath rusty,
dimly and finely barred with dark brown.
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