The past season a solitary great Carolina wren took up its abode in a bushy land near one corner of my vineyard. It came late in the season, near the end of August, the only one I had ever heard north of the District of Columbia. During my Washington days, many years ago, this bird was one of the most notable songsters observed in my walks. His loud, rolling whistle and warble, his jocund calls and salutations--how closely they were blended with all my associations with nature on the Potomac. When, therefore, one morning my ear caught the same blithe, ringing voice on the Hudson, be assured I was quickly on the alert. How it brought up the past. How it reopened a chapter of my life that had long been closed. It stood out amid other bird songs and calls with a distinctness that attracted the dullest ears. Such a southern, Virginia air as it gave to that nook by the river's side!
I left my work amid the grapes and went down to interview the bird. He peeped at me inquisitively and suspiciously for a few moments from a little clump of weeds and bushes, then came out in fuller view, and finally hopped to the top of a grape-post, drooped his wings and tail, lifted up his head, and sang and warbled his best. If he had known exactly what I came for and had been intent upon doing his best to please me, he could not have succeeded better.
The great Carolina wren is a performer like the mockingbird, and is sometimes called the mocking wren. He sings and acts as well. He seems bent on attracting the attention of somebody or something. A Southern poet has felicitously interpreted certain notes by the words, "Sweetheart, sweetheart, sweet."
Day after day and week after week, till the frosts of the late October came, the bird tarried in that spot, confining his wanderings to a very small area and calling and warbling at all hours. From my summer-house I could often hear his voice rise up from under the hill, seeming to fill all the space down there with sound. What brought this solitary bird there, so far from the haunts of his kind, I know not. Maybe he was simply spying out the land, and will next season return with his mate. Mockingbirds have wandered north as far as Connecticut, and were found breeding there by a collector, who robbed them of their eggs. The mocking wren would be a great acquisition to our northern river banks and bushy streams. It is the largest of our wrens, and in the volume and variety of its notes and the length of its song season surpasses all others.