INSECT-DESTROYING BIRDS. 157 



CHAPTER LXX. 



.THE WHITE-THROATED TREE CREEPER. 



(^Climacteris leiicophcea^ Tatham.) 



This elegant little bird, wliicli any day may be seen 

 creeping, often spirally, up the trunks and brandies of 

 trees, is also a most valuable insect-eating bird, the 

 stomach of one which I dissected being filled with beetles, 

 grubs, and other insect debris. 



Gould says of this bird — " That the range of this 

 species is widely extended as that of the Climacteris 

 scandens^ being a common bird in New South Wales and 

 the intervening country, as far as South Australia ; the 

 precise limit of its habitat northward have not been 

 ascertained, but it does not form part of the fauna of 

 Western Australia." 



The whole structure of this species is much more 

 slender and creeper-like than any other member of its 

 genus, and I observed that its difference of. form has a 

 corresponding influence over its habits, for they are more 

 strictly arboreal than those of its congeners. It also 

 differs from C, scandens in the character of country and 

 kind of trees it inhabits, being rarely seen on the large 

 Eucalypti of the open forest lands, but resorting to trees 

 bordering creeks, as well as those on the mountains and 

 the brushes. I have frequently seen it in the brushes of 

 Illawarra and Maitlaud, in which localities the C. 

 scandens is seldom if ever found. While traversing the 

 trunks of trees in search of insects, which it does with 

 great facility, it utters a shrill piping cry ; in this cry, 

 and, indeed, in the whole of its actions, it strikingly 

 reminded me of the Common Creeper of Europe {Certliia 

 familiaris)^ particularly in its manner of ascending the 



