Sharp hunger, rather
than natural boldness, drives him near the homes of men, where he appears just
as the house wren departs for the South. With a forced confidence in man that
is almost pathetic in a bird that loves the forest as he does, he picks up
whatever lies about the house or barn in the shape of food-crumbs from the
kitchen door, a morsel from the dog's plate, a little seed in the barn-yard,
happily rewarded if he can find a spider lurking in some sheltered place to
give a flavor to the unrelished grain. Now he becomes almost tame, but we feel
it is only because he must be.
The spot that decided preference leads him to, either winter or summer, is
beside a bubbling spring. In the moss that grows near it the nest is placed in
early summer, nearly always roofed over and entered from the side, in true
wren-fashion; and as the young fledglings emerge from the creamy-white eggs,
almost the first lesson they receive from their devoted little parents is in
the fine art of bathing. Even in winter weather, when the wren has to stand on
a rim of ice, he will duck and splash his diminutive body. It is recorded of a
certain little individual that he was wont to dive through the icy water on a
December day. Evidently the wrens, as a family, are not far removed in the
evolutionary scale from true water-birds.
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