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Geinieral Habits. Aside from the Woodpeckers, none 

 of which need ever be mistaken fox Warblers, we have four 

 .species of birds in New England which creep about the 

 limbs of trees. Two of these are Nuthatches, both stout 

 birds without stripings, and with peculiarly formed bills. 

 '(Fig. 2 2, Red-bellied Nuthatch;) the third is the Brown 

 Creeper ; a species brown in general coloration, and with a 

 long, slender bill ( See'Fig. 21 ) and the fourth is the Black 



Fig. 18. 



Fk;, 15. 



^^4f 



^f 



"Warbling Vireo. 



A, keel ofWcter Thrush-, 

 B, keel of Wilson's Thrush, 



and White Creeper, wholly unlike any other species of creep- 

 ing birds. Thus when we see a little bird striped black and 

 white, creeping about the limbs of trees, most usually in the 

 woodlands, often in low scrub, and not uncommonly in or- 

 chards and shrubbery about houses in spring, we may be 

 sure that it is a Black and Wliite Creeper. 



It is astonishing with what celerity these little war- 

 blers move about the limbs, now under them, now over 

 them, gliding everywhere with the greatest ease, and assum- 

 ing all imaginable positions, now head downward, that they 

 may peer into a crack in the bark which may contain an in- 

 sect, or reaching upward on tiptoe in order to seize some 

 tempting tit-bit from an overhanging twig. In fact, their 

 agile and eccentric movements most emphatically proclaim 

 the Black and White Creepers as the acrobats among 

 Warblers.. 



