Creeper WESTERN BIRDS 



He says that while the birds themselves were most 

 often seen and heard high above, scaling the massive 

 trunks of the huge firs, pines, and cedars, yet their nests 

 ranged not higher than twenty feet above the ground. 

 He found the average height of thirty nests examined to 

 be about six feet. In other words the majority could be 

 at least touched by the hand as we stood on the ground. 

 One nest was only three feet above ground. 



"Although the majority of nests found were on cedar 

 trunks, one was on a Jeffrey pine, and at least five were 

 on silver firs. In the latter case the trees were dead and 

 rotting, for it was only on dead trees that the bark had 

 become loosened and separated enough from the trunk to 

 afford the narrow sheltered spaces sought by the 

 Creepers for nesting sites. But the huge living cedar 

 trunks furnished the ideal situations. For the bark on 

 these is longitudinally ridged and fibrous, and it fre- 

 quently becomes split into inner and outer layers, the 

 latter hanging in broad loose strips. The narrow spaces 

 behind these necessitate a very compressed style of 

 nest." Dr. Grinnell describes a typical nest which he 

 studied as follows: 



"The material employed externally was cedar bark 

 strips one-eighth to one-half inch in width. This mate- 

 rial had been deposited behind the loosened bark until it 

 packed tightly enough to afford support for the nest 

 proper. The bark strips extended down fully a foot in 

 the cavity, and some of them protruded through the 

 vertical slit which served the birds as an entrance. The 

 main mass of the nest consisted of shredded weathered 

 inner bark strips of the willow, felted finest internally, 

 where admixed with a few small down-feathers. This 

 nest proper was six inches wide in the direction per- 

 mitted by the space, and only one and three-fourths 

 inches across the narrow way. The nest cavity was one 

 and one-third by two and one-fourth inches, so that the 



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