TREE-CRFEPER. 121 



with white, which distinguishes the bird from the Water-Pipit. 

 The chin is whitish and the rest of the under parts sandy buff, 

 sHghtly spotted on the breast and faintly streaked on the flanks. 

 The bill and irides are dark brown ; the legs reddish-brown. 

 The sexes are alike The upper parts are greener and the 

 under more suffused with yellow after the autumn moult. The 

 young (on the left on Plate 40) is more streaked and spotted 

 than the adult in winter dress. 



The Scandinavian bird, which occurs as a winter visitor, has 

 a warmer, more vinous breast, and the spots on the under 

 parts are often hardly perceptible. Length, 6-5 ins. Wing, 

 3*5 ins. Tarsus, i in. 



Family CERTHIID^. The Creepers. 

 Tree-Creeper. Certhia familiaris Linn. 



Colour differences, more or less slight, have caused syste- 

 matists to split off the British Tree-Creeper from the Northern 

 bird under the name C. f. britatiica Ridgway (corrected to 

 britannicd). Broadly speaking the Creeper is an Holarctic 

 species divided into numerous sub-species, but Seebohm's 

 sarcastic criticism of this "splitting" is not altogether un- 

 deserved. The British form, though nomadic in winter, is not 

 strictly migratory, nor is the typical race, which has been 

 recognised as a wind-blown wanderer to Shetland. Others 

 which have occurred on the Orkneys and Shetlands, were 

 probably Scandinavian birds. 



In our islands the Tree-Creeper (Plate 49) occurs everywhere 

 in wooded country, but is nowhere abundant, though doubtless 

 overlooked as it is small and soberly coloured. Many are 

 astonished when they see an apparently avian mouse running 

 up a tree. Its progress up a trunk is in a series of short murine 

 jerks, spasmodic rather than rapid ; it frequently ascends 



