THE COMMON CREEPER. 135 



OF TEE CREEPER TKIBE IN GENERAL. 



THE bills of these birds are curved, slender, and pointed. The 

 tongue s generally sharp, fringed, or tubular. The legs are strong, 

 and for med with three toes forward. 



The Creepers are dispersed through most countries of the globe 

 They feed chiefly on insects, in search of which they run up and 

 down the stems and branches of trees. Most of the species breed iu 

 hollows of trees, where they lay many eggs. 



THE COMMON CREEPER, AND RED CREEPER. 



The bill of the Common Creeper is hooked; and its legs are 

 slender, with the claws very long, to- enable 

 it to creep up and down the bodies of trees 

 in search of insects. Its color is a mixed 

 gray, with the under parts white. The quill- 

 feathers of the wings are brown, and several 

 of them -are tipped with white. The tail is 

 long, and consists of twelve stiff feathers. 



It is found both in Europe and Asia; and 

 is also very common in some parts of North 

 America, particularly in the neighborhood 

 of Philadelphia. 



Except the Humming-bird, this is the 

 smallest of all the feathered tribes ; its weight 

 being no more than five drachms. The 

 CREEPERS. length of its feathers, and the manner that it 



has of ruffling them, give it, however, an 



appearance much beyond its real size. It is a bird which seems 

 peculiarly fond of the society of man; and in some parts of the 

 world it is often protected by his interested care. From observing 

 its utility in destroying insects, it has long been a custom, with the 

 inhabitants of many parts of the United States, to fix a small box at 

 the end of a long pole, in gardens and about houses, as a place for it 

 to build in. In these boxes the animals form their nests, and hatch 

 their young-ones; which the parent birds feed with a variety of dif- 

 ferent insects, particularly those species that are injurious in gardens. 

 A gentleman, who was at the trouble of watching these birds, 

 observed that the parents generally went from the nest and returned 

 with insects from forty to sixty times in an hour, and that, in one 

 particular hour, they carried food no fewer than seventy-one times. 

 In this business they were engaged during the greatest part of the 

 day. Allowing twelve hours to be thus occupied, a single pair of 

 these birds would destroy at least six hundred insects in the course 

 of one day , on the supposition that the two birds took only a single 

 insect each time. But it is highly probable that they often took more. 



