364 Certain Phases of Bird-Life . [July, 
procuring food, come by experience. Watch a restless little 
creeper ( Certhia familiar is), during chill winter mornings, 
as it flies from tree to tree and clambers over and 
about the rough bark. It seems, indeed, a mere automaton, 
driven, and not going of its own free will ; but, if we con- 
tinue our observations but a little longer, we shall And it 
really a discriminating creature, passing by certain trees 
that are to us all one with those visited. It is not chance, 
but a consciousness of the uselessness of search, that de- 
termines its flight to some more distant rather than a nearer 
tree. 
As an example of the knowledge gained by young birds 
through imitation, let us take young woodpeckers. On 
leaving the nest they accompany their parents, but are not 
fed by them. Like the old birds, they immediately com- 
mence to climb the trunks and branches of the trees. 
Having been fed with inserts when in the nest, they are al- 
ready able to recognise their proper food, and devour the 
visible inserts they may discover on the outer surface of the 
bark. Now, was it the example set by their parents, or the 
peculiar construction of their bill and feet, that was the 
cause of their having sought the trees and climbed over 
them in the peculiar manner common to their kind ? I 
think, clearly the former. Now, merely clambering over the 
bark of trees would not enable them to secure sufficient 
food, and imitation could not extend beyond this point ; but 
here experience comes into play, and the gradual acquire- 
ment of the whole routine is easily traced. The bark of 
trees is nearly always cracked, and in the crevices are more 
insedts than on the surface, and the habit, soon acquired, of 
search in the cracks of the bark is the one step from 
searching over the exposed surface to search beneath. 
Imitation led the ignorant young bird to the thrifty growth 
of timber, and not to the tangled hedge-rows. Experience 
taught him the accustomed haunts of those inseCts on which 
Nature bids him prey. If we go back into the remote past, 
and recal the ancestral woodpecker, we can, with no undue 
use of the imagination, picture to ourselves the first steps 
that led the good climber to find in the half-decayed bark 
the nourishing food abounding there ; and now let us return 
to the present, and seek for some variation in the habits of 
the birds of to-day. As an instance, the “ flicker,” or 
golden-winged woodpecker, leaves the timber-lands, and in 
loose flocks, often in company with robins, wanders over 
pasture-fields and meadows in search of food, more especially 
the crickets, and not under fences do they look for them, 
