Creepers are mostly dull-coloured, but the Wall-creeper has crimson patches on the wings. This bird, which has occurred in Britain, haunts mountain-cliffs. The Tree-creeper, a resident in Britain, builds its nest behind pieces of loose bark, or under tiles, or in crevices of trees, walls, or hollow branches. In this nest are laid from six to nine eggs, pure white, spotted with red, or with a creamy ground-colour, with the spots thicker round the large end.
Photo by A. S. Radland & Sons.
YOUNG SKYLARKS.
Several broods are reared by each pair of birds in a season.
Intermediate in position between the Creepers and the Titmice are the Nuthatches. Chiefly inhabitants of the northern parts of both hemispheres, they extend as far south as Mexico, whilst in the Old World they occur plentifully in the Himalaya. The largest species is found in the mountains of Burma. One species is frequently met with in England, and occasionally in Scotland, but is unknown in Ireland.
The English Nuthatch may serve us as a type of the group. "Its habits," writes Dr. Sharpe, "are a combination of those of the tit and woodpecker. Like the former bird, the nuthatch seeks diligently for its insect-food on the trunks and branches of trees, over which it runs like a woodpecker, with this difference, that its tail is not pressed into the service of climbing a tree, nor does it generally ascend from the bottom to the top, as a woodpecker so often does. On the contrary, a nuthatch will generally be found in the higher branches, and will work its way down from one of the branches towards the trunk, and is just as much at home on the under side of a limb as the upper. Its movements are like those of a mouse rather than of a bird, and it often runs head-downward, or hangs on the under side of a branch and hammers away at the bark with its powerful little bill. The noise produced by one of these birds, when tapping at a tree, is really astonishing for a bird of its size, and, if undisturbed, it can be approached pretty closely. Its general food consists of insects, and in the winter the nuthatches join the wandering parties of tits and creepers which traverse the woods in search of food.... In the autumn it feeds on hazel-nuts and beech-mast, breaking them open by constant hammering; and, like the tits, the nuthatches can be tempted to the vicinity of houses in winter, and become quite interesting by their tameness."
The nuthatch nests in hollow trees, plastering up the entrance with mud, and leaving an aperture only just sufficient to enable it to wriggle in and out. A remarkable nest may be seen at the British Natural History Museum. It was built in the side of a haystack, to which the industrious birds had carried as much as 11 lbs. of clay, and had thus made for themselves a solid nest in an apparently unfavourable position.
The Titmice occur in one form or another all over Europe, Asia, and Africa, and in the New World as far south as Southern Mexico. The family may be divided into True, Crested, Long-tailed, and Penduline Tits and Reedlings, all but the penduline tits being represented in England.
