THE CRIMSON-WINGED CREEPERS. 1 25 
eastwards from the Caucasus. It is also an inhabitant of Abys- 
sinia to the southward. The northward range of the species 
in France, as Mr. Howard Saunders has recently pointed out 
(Bull., Brit. Orn. Club, i., p. xlix), is more extended than is 
generally supposed, and it has been noticed on the Rhine as 
far north as Coblentz ; so that its appearance in England is 
not so strange as might otherwise have been imagined. 
Habits. — Everyone who has had the opportunity of observing 
this bird in a state of nature, agrees that it is a most beautiful 
object in the mountainous localities which it frequents, the 
bright red on the wings rendering it generally conspicuous. 
1 .ike other Creepers, its food consists of small insects, such as 
spiders and beetles, while Bailly, the ornithologist of Savoy, 
says that it also devours ants’ eggs and small worms, sometimes 
also capturing an insect on the wing. The same observer states 
that its cry resembles the syllable pli pli pli p/i, a note like 
that of the Lesser Spotted-Woodpecker. On the face of the 
rocks which the bird frequents it climbs in a zigzag fashion, 
sometimes head-downward, “with a crab like sidling motion,” 
according to Canon Tristram, “ rapidly expanding and closing 
its wings in a succession of jerks, and showing its brilliant 
crimson shoulders at each movement.” The flight of this species 
is described as very peculiar, and more like that of a Butterfly. 
Nest — Placed in the crevices of rocks, sometimes in perfectly 
inaccessible positions. Mr. Seebohm writes: “A handsome 
nest of this bird in my collection is very elaborately built. Its 
chief material is moss, evidently gathered from the rocks and 
stones, intermingled with a few grasses, and compactly felted 
together with hairs, wool, and a few feathers. The lining is 
almost exclusively composed of wool and hair, very thickly and 
densely felted together. The nest is about one and a half 
inches deep inside, and the internal diameter is about three 
inches; outside it measures two and a half inches in depth, 
and is about six inches in diameter. 
Eggs. — Three to five in number. Almost pure white, save 
for certain tiny black or reddish-brown dots, scarcely percep- 
tible on some eggs, and sparsely scattered over the surface of 
others, in no case very perceptible. Axis, o'S-^'85 inch > 
diam., 0-55. 
