There’s a little brown wren that has built in our tree,[10] And she’s scarcely as big as a big bumble-bee; She has hollowed a house in the heart of a limb, And made the walls tidy and made the doors trim With the down of the crow’s foot, and tow, and with straw The cosiest dwelling that you ever saw.
The little brown wren has the brightest of eyes And a foot of very diminutive size. Her tail is as big as the sail of a ship. She’s demure, though she walks with a hop and a skip; And her voice—but a flute were more fit than a pen To tell of the voice of the little brown wren.
One morning Sir Sparrow came sauntering by And cast on the wren’s house an envious eye; With a strut of bravado and toss of his head, “I’ll put in my claim here,” the bold fellow said; So straightway he mounted on impudent wing, And entered the door without pausing to ring.
An instant—, and swiftly that feathery knight All towsled and tumbled, in terror took flight, While there by the door, in her favourite perch, As neat as a lady just starting for church, With this song on her lips, “He will not call again Unless he is asked,” sat the little brown wren.
If the bluebirds had her courage and hot, quick temper, they would never let the sparrows drive them away from their boxes. Unfortunately a hole large enough to admit a bluebird will easily admit those grasping monopolists; but Jenny Wren is safe, if she did but know it, in her house with its tiny front door. It is amusing to see a sparrow try to work his shoulders through the small hole of an empty wren house, pushing and kicking madly, but all in vain.
What rent do the wrens pay for their little houses? No man is clever enough to estimate the vast numbers of insects on your place that they destroy. They eat nothing else, which is the chief reason why they are so lively and excitable. Unable to soar after flying insects because of their short, round wings, they keep, as a rule, rather close to the ground which their finely barred brown feathers so closely match. Whether hunting for grubs in the wood-pile, scrambling over the brush heap after spiders, searching among the trees to provide a dinner for their large families, or creeping, like little feathered mice, in queer nooks and crannies among the outbuildings on the farm, they are always busy in your interest which is also theirs. It certainly pays, in every sense, to encourage the wrens.