It is said to breed most numerously in the southern counties of England, occasionally in the north, and rarely in Scotland and Ireland. Its nest is very similar to that of the Common Skylark, but as a rule shows a little better workmanship, perhaps, in its construction. It is situated under a tuft of grass, in heather, or at the foot of a bush. Sometimes it is simply placed in a little hollow on ground which does not grow sufficient grass to form any kind of shelter or hiding. The eggs, numbering four or five, are reddish-white, light brownish-yellow, or greenish-white in ground colour, thickly spotted and speckled with dull reddish-brown and underlying markings of grey. This species commences to breed in March and rears two broods during the season. It resides with us all the year, but is subject to local movement. [Illustration: hillside] =THE COMMON WREN.= [Illustration: branch with flowers] Everybody knows and loves the wee brown Wren with its active, pert ways and cheerful rattling song, which is heard nearly the whole of the year round. “Jenny” or “Kitty” Wren, as the bird is often called, is to be met with almost everywhere by sea-shore and riverside, in the cultivated garden and on the barren waste, along the plain and on the mountain side, in thick woods and treeless deserts where there is little else than rocks for it to alight upon. Whether the sun be shining, flowers blooming, and food plentiful, or the ground be wreathed in a thick blanket of snow and the world a picture of desolation and a place of hunger, the little bird is ever cheerful, active, and gay. As the poets have it: “When icicles hang dripping from the roof Pipes his perennial lay.” Its song is surprisingly loud and clear for such a tiny musician, especially when heard only a few inches away, as I have heard it on several occasions whilst crouching inside some of my hiding contrivances waiting to secure a photograph of some shy bird or beast. It is delivered both upon the wing and when the musician is at rest upon a branch or stone. A Wren’s call notes sound something like _tit, tit-it, tit-it-it, tit-it-it-it_, uttered so quickly as to resemble the winding-up of a clock. Even in the depths of the very severest winter weather, “Jenny” Wren refuses to be “pauperised” like the Robin, the Blackbird, and the Song Thrush, and disdaining the help of man, hunts all day long for its own support in a spirit of hopeful independence. It does not matter whether it is an old moss-grown stone wall, a stack of loose firewood, or a shrubbery, in and out goes the little nut-brown bird from cold grey morn till glooming eve, examining every crack and cranny for some lurking morsel of insect life. [Illustration: WREN’S NEST AMONGST IVY GROWING ON THE TRUNK OF A TREE.]