on a peg just inside the door of the ranchman's old wine shed hung one of the horses' unused nosebags. a lad on the place told me that a wren had a nest in it, and added that he had seen a fight between the wren and a pair of linnets who seemed to be trying to steal her material.
the first time i went to the wine shed both wrens and linnets were there, but nothing happened and i forgot about the original quarrel. by peering through a crack in the boarding i could look down on the wren in the nosebag inside. i could see her dark eyes, the white line over them, and her black barred tail. she was vigor's wren. she got so tame that she would not stir when the creaking door was opened close by her, or when people were talking in the shed; and i used to go often to see how her affairs were progressing.
all her eggs hatched in time, and the small birds, from being at first all eyeball, soon got to be all bill. when i opened the bag to look at them, the light woke them up and they opened their mouths, showing chasms of yellow throat.[172]
the mother bird fed them several times when i was watching only a few feet away. she would come ambling along in the pretty wren fashion, with her tail over her back; creeping down the side of a lath, running behind a rafter, scolding as though to make conversation, and then winding down to the nest through a crack. one day she hesitated, and waited to spy at me, since i had thought it polite to stare at her! when satisfied, she hopped along from beam to beam, her bright eyes still upon me. then her mate joined her. he had been suspicious of me at our first meeting, but apparently had changed his mind, for, seeing his spouse hesitate, he glanced at me unconcernedly, as much as to say, "is she all you're waiting for?" and flew out, leaving her to my tender mercies. she hopped meekly into the bag after that rebuke, but stretched up to peer at me once more before settling down inside.
one day when i looked in to see how wren matters were progressing, to my amazement and horror, instead of my wren's nest i found another, high in the mouth of the bag with one fresh egg in it! the egg was a linnet's, and the nest had been built right on top of the wren's. such a stench came from the bag that i took out the upper nest and found the four little wrens dead in their crib.
the nosebag nest. (vigors's wren.) the nosebag nest.
(vigors's wren.)
i had become very fond of the winsome mother bird, and so much interested in her brood that[174] this horrid discovery came like a tragedy in the family of a friend.
and what did it all mean? unless the old wrens had been dead, could the linnets have gotten possession? the wrens were usually able to hold their own in a discussion. if the nestlings had been alive, would the linnets—would any bird—have built upon them, deliberately burying them alive? it seemed too diabolical. on the other hand, what could have killed the little wrens and left them in the nest? if they had been dead when the linnets came to build, how could the birds have chosen such a sepulchre for a building site?
grieving over my little friends, i cleaned out the nosebag and hung it up on its peg. three weeks later i discovered, to my great perplexity, that a pair of wrens had built in the bottom of the bag and had one egg in the nest. now, was this the same pair of birds that had built there before, and if so, what did it all mean?
