TREE CREEPERS. 13 
Famity ANABATIDA. TREE CREEPERS AND ANABATES. 
This group is divided into two sub-families. 
sof rset tata } pipe tees Pea ccianee geal: longer than in the preceding eae 
Of the Anabatine, the habits of nabates, as given by Gray, will fur- 
nish the example. 
“Tt is in the warmer parts of South America that these birds reside in 
bushy places on the sides of the rivers. They are sedentary, generally in 
small flocks of ten or twelve, dispersed in the neighboring shrubs, on 
which they are constantly on the move, sometimes leaping from branch to 
branch, or hopping about on the ground round the stems of the thorny 
shrubs, which they seem to prefer to other kinds: these they search for 
minute insects and seeds. When perched, they erect their crests, and at 
the same time utter loudly, without interruption, a varied note.” 
Of the Dendrocolaptine, or Tree Creepers, the habits of the typical 
genus Dendrocolaptes will illustrate the group. These birds inhabit the 
vast forests of the warmer parts of South America. They are usually ob- 
served clinging to the trunks and branches of trees by means of their 
strong, curved claws and the rigid points of their tail feathers, examining 
the cracks of the bark and among the foliage for the larve of insects, and 
even those in a perfect state, on which they principally subsist. In fact, in 
their habits and manners they closely assimilate to the Common Creeper. 
The female deposits from three to four eggs in hollow trunks of trees. 
Mr. Vigors says, “The whole of the birds, however, thus united by close 
affinities, and as such generally brought together by systematic writers into 
one conterminous series, are decidedly divisible into two distinct groups, nat- 
urally arranging themselves under different subdivisions of the order. The 
family of Certhiadee live upon animal food, while the remaining genera of 
the Linnean Certhia subsist chiefly upon vegetable juices. The tongues 
of each, though similar, in being more or less extensible, and in being the 
medium through which they are supplied with food, are equally distinct as 
the nature of the food itself. Those of the former are sharp, and of a 
spear-like form, as if to transfix the insects which are their prey, while those 
of the latter are divided into tubular filaments, which appear exclusively 
adapted to the purposes of suction. In other particulars they exhibit an 
equal difference. The Certhiade climb, and their feet are of a conformable 
structure ; but the feet of suctorial birds are not only in general unsuited to 
that purpose, but they become gradually weaker as they come nearer the 
type of the tribe, where they are so short and slightly formed as to be ser- 
viceable only in perching, when the bird is at rest.” 
NO. XI. 5D 
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