COMMON CREEPER. 515 
to Naumann, the Creeper sometimes visits the ground in winter in those 
places where the sun has melted the snow, and searches amongst the moss 
and coarse grass for its insect food, and possibly for the small seeds which 
this observant naturalist states are sometimes found in its stomach. He 
also states that the bird may be observed, usually in the morning and 
evening, by the side of watercourses and ditches, either for the purpose of 
drinking or of bathing itself. 
In winter the Creeper is often found in company with Goldcrests and 
Tits. When I was wandering about the woods of Southern France last 
winter, I noticed that in almost every flock or party of Tits we came across 
a Creeper was in their compauy—the Tits obtaining their food from the 
twigs and buds, whilst he sought for his fare in the clefts and crevices of 
the bark of the trunk. At Bayonne, in the plantation between the railway- 
station and the river, Creepers were commoner than | had ever seen them 
before. I must have seen at least a dozen birds. I have generally 
observed them as a comparatively silent solitary pair amongst a noisy flock 
of Tits. Here they were chasing each other from tree to tree, sometimes 
on the thick trunks, but as often on the slender branches; and all the time 
they were making the plantation quite , noisy with their loud shrill ery of 
cheet-cheet. This (9th of March) was evidently their pairing-season ; and 
their habits seemed quite altered for the occasion. The Creeper cannot 
be called a gregarious bird; it is a social one; and its sociability is only 
to be observed in the nonbreeding-season. The song of the Creeper 
is only rarely heard, usually in March and April, and puts one in mind 
of the notes of the Marsh-Tit, and is compared by Mr. Gray to the song of 
the Goldcerest. . 
The breeding-season of the Creeper commences in April; and its nesting- 
site is somewhat varied. A site is usually chosen on some decaying tree, 
where the thick bark has peeled away from the trunk for some distance 
and left a hollow space behind in which the bird can build its nest. Less 
frequently it will choose a site in some crevice in a wood-stack ; and 
Stevenson, in his ‘Birds of Norfolk,’ publishes a note from the pen of 
Mr. Norris showing that the bird will sometimes build in a suitable hole 
‘in a shed or outbuilding. The nest is a handsome little structure. There 
is a rustic beauty about a Creeper’s nest which few others possess. The 
crevice behind the bark which the bird usually selects is often too large 
for the nest itself; and the superfluous space is filled up with a quantity of 
fine twigs, chiefly of beech and birch. Round the edge of the nest is art- 
fully woven a series of the finest twigs; and the lining is made of roots, 
grass, moss, and sometimes feathers. But the chief characteristic of the 
Creeper’s nest is the lining of fine strips of inside bark which is probably 
invariably there. The Creeper rears two broods in the year, accordi ug to 
Naumann ; but the second brood is not so large as the first, oe of from 
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