one meets with in the woods contains at least one pair of Creepers, who 

 diligently search the bark of the tree while the Tits are working at the buds 

 and twigs. The call-note of the Creeper is a feeble but penetrating ' cheee- 

 cheee' ', its song is but rarely heard, usually in the very early spring, remind- 

 ing one rather of the vocal performances of the Golden-Crested Wren, but 

 not so loud. 



The food of the Creeper is almost entirely composed of the insects and 

 gnats which lurk in the crevices of the rough bark of forest trees. The 

 bird seems to have a decided liking for small spiders, as I have seen a 

 Creeper pull these insects from their webs on the windows of a disused 

 stable, and often observed the bird there searching the corners of the panes 

 as if it expected to find the webs tenanted by other spiders. 



About the middle of April the Creeper begins to lay. The nesting- 

 site is somewhat varied. Sometimes the nest is placed behind some large 

 piece of bark which has peeled away from the decaying trunk of a dead 

 tree, sometimes in the split and torn stump of a fir-tree which has been 

 smashed by the winter's gales, or in a cavity between two trunks of a 

 beech. More rarely it is found in some pile of branches leaning against the 

 trunk of a tree, in a crevice in a wood-stack, or in some corner in an out- 

 house. The nest is beautifully built. The hollow in which it is placed is 

 often rather larger than is necessary, and is carefully filled up with twigs of 

 beech and birch, or tiny pieces of dead wood. The nest proper is beautifully 

 built of moss, dry grass roots, and a few feathers, edged with the finest 

 twigs, and very often lined with fine strips of the inside bark of trees. Two 

 broods are frequently reared in the year, but rarely does the second laying 

 consist of more than four or five eggs. From six to nine eggs are usually 

 laid ; the ground-colour is sometimes pure white, sometimes creamy white, 

 marked with brownish red spots and a few greyish underlying markings. 

 They vary considerably in the number and placing of the markings, though 

 all the eggs in one clutch are usually of one type. In some clutches the 

 spots are confined to a zone round the large end of the egg ; in others the 

 spots in this zone are confluent, forming a ring of colour ; while in others again 

 they are few in number, and scattered pretty evenly over the entire surface. In 

 these last specimens the spots are usually much darker and of a deep reddish 

 brown. The eggs vary in length from '68 to '58 inch, and in breadth from 

 48 to -44 inch. 



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