The yellow-bellied sapsucker is also a winter guest, but he is far more timid than the downy, and I have often seen him routed by the sparrows or scared off by a sudden sound. The male is very gay in plumage, with much mottled yellowish brown on back, conspicuous white stripes on wings, beautiful clear yellow and black in front, scarlet on his head and cardinal at his throat. The female has a white throat and cardinal or black cap. I have noticed one with a cardinal cap that had little black feathers sticking here and there like an emery bag. They are very full of fun, even riotous in play, and shout, in their summer home--the woods of the north--but they are very quiet when wintering with us, and often flit away without a sound. Of the nuthatches, the pretty white-breasted one with his soft bluish-grey coat and shining black head, is our familiar resident and the red-breasted an occasional winter companion. They are charming little birds, not specially musical, though their call is vigorous and friendly, but very pretty and gentle, and awakening perpetual wonder and admiration at their feats as acrobats, running as lightly head downwards as in a natural position, and showing equal swiftness and grace in every movement, whether with aid of wings or without. They never seem in the least afraid of us, but raise their softly rounded heads and look at us with a most delightful confidence. The brown creeper is like a bit of the trunk in his brown tints, mottled as if in mimicry of the play of light and shadow on the bark. He is as truly a tree-creature as ever Greek fable devised, and can so flatten himself, when alarmed, against a tree that no inch of his light breast is visible, and it is difficult, indeed, to recognize him as a separate being. He is the one species found in America of quite a large Old World family, and has some odd characteristics. First, his long tail, used to aid him in climbing, is rather curved and stiff and generally worn by constant use. His bill is also curved, so that the profile of his figure is like a relaxed bow as he works his plodding way up the side of the tree, diligently seeking insects, eggs, and larvæ, in the minute crevices of the bark. He sticks his little nest, made, of course, of bits of dead wood, bark, and twigs, between the tree and a strip of loose bark, very like a part of the tree itself, and the eggs are spotted and dotted with wood colors, brown in different shades, and lavender. Altogether his life is a tree-study; the tree is to him home, model, hunting-ground, hiding-place, and refuge. He never descends by creeping, but when he wants to search a lower part of the trunk, he flies to the base, and begins it all over again. In the summer fir-wood, farther northward, it is said he sings, but in winter-time we hear only a faint squeak, a little like one bough scraping against another.