12 
BEAUTIFUL BIRDS. 
somewhat like the song of a chaffinch, hut shriller, 
more resembling the rich note of the hedge-chanter. 
AVe will not particularize the different species of 
which this family is composed, but pass on to the 
aberrant group in Mr. Swainson’s arrangement, viz., 
the Troglodi/tincd, or AYrens. These birds have such 
a slight development of the scansorial powers that 
they have been generally placed with the AYarblers. 
So little indeed do the majority of them climb, in 
the true sense of the word, Air. Swainson remarks, 
that it is only by tracing their close and unquestion- 
able relation to others, in which the scansorial struc- 
ture, and the faculty of exercising it, is more apparent, 
that we arrive at the positive certainty of their be- 
longing to this family. The length and form of the 
bill and the brown plumage of our common species ac- 
cord with the rest of the family; 
but it is the peculiar length of 
the hind claw wliich claims 
for this genus a station in 
the same family with Platyurus 
and other American species, 
which have additional scan- 
sorial characters. 
There is a species, Tichodroma muraria, or AYall 
Creeper, which is seldom seen upon trees ; the faces 
of vertical rocks and the walls of old edifices are its 
favourite haunts, where it feeds upon insects, their 
larvae and pupae, particularly spiders and their eggs, 
which it obtains from the clefts and crevices. It is a 
pretty little bii’d, of a light ash colour, the coverts 
and edges of a part of the wing-quills being bright 
