TREE-CREEPER 
79 
slender in form, sober in colour, quiet of voice, and 
very quick and shy in hiding itself on the further 
side of a bole or bough as it runs hunting for 
insects, with its curved slender bill, in the interstices 
of the bark and wood. In its tree-climbing, agile 
habits it is very like the Nuthatch, but its slender 
head and delicate forceps of a bill are as perfectly 
formed for its special business of probing the 
smallest cranny into which an insect can creep as 
they would be absolutely incapable of splitting a 
hazel nut like the massive neck and beak of the 
Nuthatch. It has also a different method of 
covering its ground ; instead of searching the tree 
upwards, downwards, sideways, and anyhow like 
the Nuthatch, it almost invariably begins near the 
ground, works its way up in a zig-zag or spiral 
course till the beginning or middle of one of the 
chief branches, and then drops down to the foot of 
a new tree to begin in the same way again. It uses 
its stiff, pointed tail-feathers to support itself in 
climbing very much in the fashion of the Wood- 
peckers, and as it runs up the tree-trunk in its 
close, jerky way, it has a peculiarly flat and curved 
appearance, with its tail clasping the bark at one 
end and its bill at the other. Its upper parts are 
minutely and beautifully mottled with brown, and, 
underneath, it is a clear silvery grey. It generally 
breeds in May, and makes its nest in various holes 
