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about alone. A pair that have been mated and bred do not always part and live in solitude after 
the season of reproduction, but often continue to live in company during the rest of the year, only 
parting a for a short time when in search of food, and rejoining each other after the lapse of a 
few moments, either by the one following the other on some rock or edifice, or by calling to 
each other in a sharp shrill tone. Their call-note, uttered like that of the Least Spotted 
Woodpecker, sounds like pli-pli-pli-pli-pli-pli. If this pair should in the autumn undertake a 
partial migration, or wander away for a time, they do so in company; and before the spring, they 
reappear in their old quarters. One is led to believe that the same couple return to breed when 
one sees them take possession of places where this species has bred in former years. This bird 
is most often to be seen in Savoy at the commencement of the winter, when the first frost sets 
in; it then leaves the mountains, its summer home, and is seen in the towns, villages, or the 
quarries and rocks adjoining them, and especially on the walls of old solitary chateaux, fortresses, 
towers, clock-towers, or any elevated buildings. It is continually in motion, climbing by means of 
successive bounds aided by flaps of the wings, now fluttering like a butterfly from one wall or rock 
to another, now remaining suspended in mid air before a cleft, moving its wings like a butterfly, 
searching after food, showing then its red-marked wings and the white and red spots in such a 
manner that many people who see it thus for the first time take it for a butterfly. It does not 
climb as elegantly as the Woodpeckers and true Climbers; nor does it, like these, make use of 
the tail-feathers as a rest, owing to the slightness of the shafts; nor does it move about on trees 
like them, but frequents the rocks that tower perpendicularly, and walls of edifices and ruins, 
generally climbing vertically, moving directly towards the summit, and never returning with the 
head downwards like the true Climbers. When it reaches the top of a wall, it often moves along 
the plinth from side to side, skipping and balancing itself from right to left in a light easy 
manner, accompanied with movements of the wings. It does the same on the tops of clock- 
towers, or the projections of windows, chimneys, or rocks which it meets with when climbing; 
and I have seen it engaged in the same exercise on the dead branches of old pines and fir trees 
which crown the summits of the rocks on which it climbs. 
‘When this bird finds plenty of food on a rock, it will visit it several times consecutively, 
without making a pause, from the base tothe summit. It mounts perpendicularly on a rock that 
slopes vertically ; and when it reaches the top, it drops as if dragged down by its own weight, until 
it reaches the part where it again commences to climb upwards....... On the 5th of June 
1844, near the summit of Hauteran, I observed a pair make eight consecutive ascents and 
descents of this nature...... 
“The Wall-creeper breeds annually in the vertical rocks of Mount Grenier, Hauteran, 
Nivolet, La Dent, and the base of the Mont du Chat, of those along the Rhone, especially in 
the neighbourhood of La Balme, in the gypsum rocks of Villarodin, near Bramans, in some of 
the rocks of Tarantaise, especially in the district of Creux, near Faucigny, and at the base of 
Mole. The female deposits her eggs in a crack or fissure, on a few pieces of straw, grass, and 
moss, mixed with wool and feathers which she and the male collect about the rocks. According 
to the position they take up in the mountains, they breed late in April, in May, or not before the 
commencement of June. ‘The pairs that breed earliest often have a second brood early in July, 
The first sitting consists of four or five eggs; the second, if they have one, only of two or three. 
