The same species is often found to differ in its manner of life in different localities. Some species of Xenops and Magarornis, like woodpeckers, climb vertically on tree-trunks in search of insect prey, but also, like tits, explore the smaller twigs and foliage at the extremity of the branches; so that the whole tree, from its root to its topmost foliage, is hunted over by them. The Sclerurus, although an inhabitant of the darkest forest, and provided with sharply-curved claws, never seeks its food on trees, but exclusively on the ground, among the decaying fallen leaves; but, strangely enough, when alarmed it flies to the trunk of the nearest tree, to which it clings in a vertical position, and, remaining silent and motionless, escapes observation by means of its dark protective colour. The Drymornis, a large bird, with feet and tail like a woodpecker, climbs on tree-trunks to seek its food; but also possesses the widely-different habit of resorting to the open plain, especially after a shower, to feed on larvae and earthworms, extracting them from a depth of three or four inches beneath the surface with its immense curved probing beak. Again, when we consider a large number of species of different groups, we find that there is not with the Tree-creepers, as with most families, any special habit or manner of life linking them together; but that, on the contrary, different genera, and, very frequently, different species belonging to one genus, possess habits peculiarly their own. In other families, even where the divergence is greatest, what may be taken as the original or ancestral habit is seldom or never quite obsolete in any of the members. This we see, for instance, in the woodpeckers, some of which have acquired the habit of seeking their food exclusively on the ground in open places, and even of nesting in the banks of streams. Yet all these wanderers, even those which have been structurally modified in accordance with their altered way of life, retain the primitive habit of clinging vertically to the trunks of trees, although the habit has lost its use. With the tyrant birds--a family showing an extraordinary amount of variation--it is the same; for the most divergent kinds are frequently seen reverting to the family habit of perching on an elevation, from which to make forays after passing insects, returning after each capture to the same stand. The thrushes, ranging all over the globe, afford another striking example. Without speaking of their nesting habits, their relationship appears in their love of fruit, in their gait, flight, statuesque attitudes, and abrupt motions.