hitch down backward. The brown creepers ascend
their vertical or oblique walls in the same way, but seldom, if ever,
do anything else than clamber upward, never descending head downward
after the fashion of the nuthatches.

[Illustration: Nuthatch]

A little bird that comes very near disputing the palm with the nuthatch
as a sylvan coaster is the creeping warbler, which flits about over the
tree boles in all kinds of attitudes, even with his dainty head pointed
toward the earth. No fear in his little striped breast of the blood
rushing to his brain. However, even this clever birdlet's dexterity is
not equal to that of the nuthatch, for the latter is able to climb up
and down a smoother wall than his little rival. More than that, the
nuthatch glides downward with more ease and in a straight line, and
does not fling himself from side to side as the warbler does. Indeed,
the warbler's favorite method of going about is with his head directed
toward the sky rather than the reverse, while it really seems that the
nuthatch's predilection is to scuttle about in an inverted position.
Does he wish to chisel a grub out of the bark of a tree? He usually
stands above the target at which he aims, so that he can deliver his
blows with more force, just as the human woodchopper prefers to take
his position above and not below the stick or log upon which he expects
to operate. There the bird clings to his shaggy wall, pounding away
with might and main, until you fear he will shatter his beak or strew
his brains on the bark. Sometimes, too, he thrusts his long, slender
beak into a crevice and pries with it in a way that threatens to snap
it off in the middle.

What has been said applies to the white-breasted nuthatch (_Sitta
carolinensis_), but it is fair to assume that all the other members of
this subfamily behave in the same way. The woodpeckers and creepers
use their spiny tails as supports while stationary or in motion; not so
the nuthatches, which are sufficiently nimble on their feet to stand or
glide without converting their tails into braces. Odd as it may seem
to the uninformed, the nuthatches belong to the order of passeres or
perching birds, in spite of their creeping habits. The systematists
have placed them in this niche of the avicular scheme, not only because
they are able to perch like other passeres on twigs and small branches,
but also because they have the foot of the true perching bird, with
three toes