COMMON CREEPER. 515 



to Naumann, the Creeper sometimes visits the ground in ^vmter in those 

 places where the sun has melted the snow, and searches amongst the moss 

 and coarse grass for its insect food, and possibly for the small seeds which 

 this obsenrant naturalist states are sometimes found in its stomach. He 

 also states that the bird may be observed, usually in the morning and 

 evening, by the side of watercourses and ditches, either for the purpose of 

 drinking or of bathing itself. 



In winter the Creeper is often found in company with Goldcrcsts and 

 Tits. When I was wandering about the woods of Southern France last 

 winter, I noticed that in almost every flock or party of Tits we came across 

 a Creeper was in their company — the Tits obtaining their food from the 

 twigs and buds, whilst he sought for his fare in the clefts and crevices of 

 the bark of the trunk. At Bayonne, in the plantation between the railway- 

 station and the river. Creepers were commoner than I had ever seen them 

 before. I must have seen at least a dozen birds. I have generally 

 observed them as a comparatively silent solitary pair amongst a noisy flock 

 of Tits. Here they were chasing each other from tree to tree, sometimes 

 on the thick trunks, but as often on the slender branches ; and all the time 

 they were making the plantation quite noisy with their loud shrill cry of 

 cheet-cheet. This (9th of March) was evidently their pairing-season ; and 

 their habits seemed quite altered for the occasion. The Creeper cannot 

 be called a gregarious bird ; it is a social one ; and its sociability is only 

 to be observed in the nonbreeding-season. The song of the Creeper 

 is only rarely heard, usually in March and April, and puts one in mind 

 of the notes of the Marsh-Tit, and is compared by Mr. Gray to the song of 

 the Goldcrest. 



The breeding-season of the Creeper commences in April; audits nesting- 

 site is somewhat varied. A site is usually chosen on some decaying tree, 

 where the thick bark has peeled away from the trunk for some distance 

 and left a hollow space behind in which the bird can build its nest. Less 

 frequently it will choose a site in some crevice in a wood-stack; and 

 Stevenson, in his ' Birds of Norfolk,'' publishes a note from the pen of 

 Mr. Norris showing that the bird will sometimes build in a suitable hole 

 in a shed or outbuilding. The nest is a handsome little structure. There 

 is a rustic beauty about a Creeper's nest which few others possess. The 

 crevice behind the bark which the bird usually selects is often too large 

 for the nest itself; and the superfluous space is filled up with a quantity of 

 fine twigs, chiefly of beech and birch. Round the edge of the nest is art- 

 fully woven a series of the finest twigs ; and the lining is made of roots, 

 grass, moss, and sometimes feathers. But the chief characteristic of the 

 Creeper's nest is the lining of fine strips of inside bark which is probably 

 invariably there. The Creeper rears two broods in the year, according to 

 Naumann ; but the second brood is not so large as the first, usually of from 



