314 BIRDS OF THE DISTRICT OF GEELONG 
few bird-voices ; it is a long succession of perhaps 
twenty or thirty staccato notes in quick succession, 
usually preceded by a somewhat higher one. To 
discover the bird is not always easy, even when you 
have traced the note to a particular tree, for its dark 
olive-brown back harmonises well with the dark 
branch or trunk of the messmate tree over which it 
is working in ascending spirals, searching every cranny 
for insects. 
It will be noted that in the main this bird works 
in the opposite way to the Tree-runner, for, flying 
from one tree to the very bottom of another, the 
Tree-creeper always works upward ; while the Tree- 
runner, which lights on a tree near the top, works 
downwards. The Tree-runner rarely descends to 
the main trunk below the branches, but it is just in 
that part of the tree that one sees the Tree-creeper 
most frequently. 
The white throat and centre of the abdomen will 
serve to distinguish this species from its relative (much 
rarer in this district) the Brown Tree-creeper. 
Not only does this Tree-creeper prospect the 
bark of the tree, but it also enters the hollows which 
one sometimes finds at the bases of growing trees, and 
it is in these hollows that I believe the birds usually 
rest at night during the non-breeding season. 
The species is non-migratory and nests regularly 
wherever it is met with; but so loth is the bird to 
approach the nest-hollow when it knows it is being 
watched, that nests are but rarely found, except by 
