THE PASSING 59 



after year to any situation that has served well, be 

 it hollow limb, fence-post, stump, or any old recep- 

 tacle of moderate convenience. I have known 

 "Wood-peckers" to cling steadfastly to a favored 

 orchard, impartiality being shown only in the choice 

 of a situation; now it was the cleft of a battered 

 kerosene tin balanced precariously on a fence-post, 

 then a sordid-looking jam-tin suspended against a 

 shed wall, and again an old kettle.* 



Possibly it was this same stay-at-home pair of 

 birds which, in earlier times, achieved many fami- 

 lies in the moderate peacefulness of a prosaic old 

 fence-post lower down the gully. The first recollec- 

 tion of that post and its tenants dates back to "nest- 

 ing" days. Continual harrying of the birds led to 

 the post being vacant for a few years, but during 

 that time force of habit, or anticipation, kept me 

 peering into the darkness of that suggestive hollow. 

 Ultimately, there came a Springtime when the com- 

 fortable old post was no longer "to let;" and for as 

 long as I knew it thereafter it was occupied by the 

 plump brown birds with the orange flight-marks on 

 the wings. 



It is a feature of the home-life of the Tree- 

 Creeper that, no matter how deep the nesting- 

 hollow, the sitting bird seems to possess an uncanny 

 power to detect danger; and usually it is well away 

 by the time the nest is visited, piping a shrill invi- 

 tation at the entrance to an unoccupied hollow, 

 nearly always, as many a deluded small boy has 



* Just as this book goes to press there has come advice 

 that the Treecreepers are nesting again in the kettle for the 

 ninth year in succession. 



