98 LAND-BIRDS. 



a. Five or more inches long. Belly, white. Otherwise 

 black. Wings barred, tail spotted, and other parts streaked, 

 with white. But $ white beneath, (obsoletely) streaked on 

 the sides. (Details omitted.) 



h. The nest is built in woods and groves, and is placed on 

 the ground (rarely, in the hole of a tree). The eggs average 

 .65 X -55 of an inch ; are elliptical ; and are white (cream- 

 tinted), covered with small and rather dark brown blotches 

 and spots, chiefly at the great end, or evenly sprinkled with 

 small light reddish brown markings. One set of four or five 

 is here laid in the last week of May (sometimes earlier or 

 later), and occasionally a second when the season is more 

 advanced. 



c. The Black and White " Creepers " are very common 

 summer residents throughout southern New England, though 

 rare in the more northern parts, where in many large tracts 

 even of wooded land they are not to be found at all. They 

 reach eastern Massachusetts, sometimes as early as the last 

 week of April, sometimes not until the second week of May, 

 and remain here until September, during a part of which 

 month migrants of this species continue to pass through from 

 the north on their way to the south. These Warblers gener- 

 ally inhabit woodland of various kinds, but occasionally visit 

 orchards and like places near the habitations of man, toward 

 whom they exhibit no shyness, and also seek their food among 

 the bushes of the " scrub," where they find the caterpillars, 

 small insects, and insect eggs, upon which they habitually 

 feed. They differ from all our other Warblers in their method 

 of obtaining their food, which is to a certain extent entirely 

 distinctive, though much like that of the true Creepers (Cer- 

 thiidce), from whom they principally differ in being much 

 less systematic in their researches, and in occasionally busy- 

 ing themselves upon the ground. They pass most of their 

 time in scrambling about the trunks and larger limbs of trees, 

 rarely perching, and also in running over old fences, such 

 as contain rotten and moss-grown or lichen-covered wood. 



chusetts much less munerous, and in the New Hampshire a comparatively scarce 

 spruce forests of northern Maine and and inconspicuous species. — W. B. 



