120 WALL-CREEPER. 
On migration the Wall-Creeper has occurred several times at 
Rouen and in other parts of Normandy, while along the Loire it is 
not uncommon, and seven or eight examples have been obtained as 
far west as Nantes; most of them on the walls of the old chateau 
which overlooks the busy wharves. It breeds sparingly in suitable 
localities in the Vosges and the Jura ; while stragglers have occurred 
on the Rhine as far north as Coblentz, and in the valleys of the 
Moselle and the Meuse. In the mountains of Savoy and Switzer. 
land it is generally distributed, being perhaps more abundant in the 
Grisons than in any other district ; it is also resident in the Basses- 
Alps, Provence, the mountainous regions of the mainland of Italy, 
Sicily, Sardinia and Elba; while Professor Giglioli has observed it 
climbing about walls in Florence. Throughout the Pyrenees and 
the Cantabrian chain, and in the mountains of the Peninsula 
down to the Sierra Nevada, it is comparatively abundant. East of 
the Alps we find it in Tyrol, Styria, the Carpathians, Greece, the 
Caucasus, and the mountains of Asia as far as China; while 
Riippell has recorded it from Egypt and Abyssinia. 
The nest, composed of moss, straw, and grass, lined with hair, 
wool and feathers, is placed in some crevice of the rocks; and the 
3-5 eggs are white, very finely spotted with reddish-brown: measure- 
ments ‘78 by 56 in. Two broods are sometimes produced in the 
season ; incubation devolving upon the female. The call-note is a 
shrill pli-pUi-pli-ph-pli, like that of the Lesser Spotted Woodpecker. 
The food consists of spiders, insects and their larve generally, in 
search of which the bird may be seen climbing up the face of a 
cliff by vertical jumps; the wings being nearly closed, though 
spread when the bird is basking; the tail is not used as an aid to 
progression. 
Adult male in breeding-plumage: slate-grey above, darker on the 
head and still darker on the rump; wing-coverts mostly crimson ; 
quills blackish, tipped with dull white, the 2nd to 5th each with 
a basal and a sub-apical white spot on the inner web, the 6th 
with only a buff basal spot ; outer webs of nearly all the primaries 
tich crimson ; tail black, tipped with grey and white; throat and 
breast black ; remaining under parts dark grey; bill, legs and feet 
black. Length 6 in. (bill ‘6 in.); wing 3:9 in. The female has 
rather less black on the throat. In winter that part becomes 
greyish-white in both sexes, while the head is browner and the upper 
parts are paler. The young bird at first exhibits less crimson, has 
a shorter bill, and the throat is grey like the shoulders, though the 
black throat is acquired the first spring. 
