BLACK AND WHITE CREEPING WARBLER. 185 
breast, where there is an area of plain white, the 
colors are arranged mostly in alternate streaks. 
Although much more slender, the creeper is just 
about the length of the chickadee, of whom he re- 
minds you by his fondness for tree trunks and 
branches. His habits of work, though, are much 
more suggestive of the nuthatch and brown 
creeper, and as the three are often found together 
during migration, it is easy to compare them. 
The black and white creeper is more active than 
the others; that is, he has more of the restless 
warbler habit of flitting. He is not as painstak- 
ing nor as systematic as the brown creeper ; and 
has neither as good head nor feet as the nuthatch. 
Where the brown creeper would go over a tree 
trunk twice, to be sure that nothing had escaped 
him, the black and white creeper will run up the 
side of a trunk a little way, then bob about on 
the branches for a moment, and flit off to another 
tree. He will hang head down from a branch to 
peck at the bark, and circle round a small tree 
horizontally, but I have never seen him go down 
a tree head first, as the nuthatch does, or walk 
around the underside of a branch. He will stand 
and look over the edge of a branch as if trying 
to see around underneath, but if he concludes to 
go to the other side he will flit around instead of 
walking. His song is a high-keyed trill, and as 
he is protected by being nearly the color of the 
gray bark he is usually clinging to, it is a grate- 
ful help to the discovery of his whereabouts. 
