THE SIERRA CREEPER. 295 



and braids paired off for nesting time. Tut, tut! chiklren, so eager to taste 

 life's heavier joys? A nest is chiselled out with inlinite labor on the part 

 of these tiny beaks, in the dead portion of some pine tree. The cavity is 

 from four io tweh'e inches in depth, with an entrance a trifle over an inch 

 in diameter. The owners share the taste of the Chickadees, and prepare 

 an tlalji.irate layette of soft vegetable fibers, fur, hair, and feathers, in 

 which the eggs are sometimes quite smothered. 



The parents are as proud as peacocks, and well they may be, of their 

 six or eight oval treasures, crystal white, with rufous frecklings, lavish 

 or scant. \\'hen the baisies are hatched, the mother goes in and out fear- 

 lessly under your very nose ; and you feel such an interest in the little family 

 that you pluck instinctively — but alas ! with what futility — at the fastenings 

 of your purse. 



No. 114. 

 SIERRA CREEPER. 



A. O. U. No. 726 d. Certhia familiaris zelotes Osgood. 



Synonym. — California CrEKpi;r (Ridgway). 



Description. — Adults: Above rusty brown, broadly and loosely streaked 

 with ashy white ; more finely and narrowly streaked on crown ; rump bright 

 russet : wing-quills crossed by two whitish bars, one on both webs near base, 

 the other on outer webs alone ; greater coverts, secondaries and tertials tipped 

 with whitish or gra}-ish buff; a narrow superciliary stripe dull whitish or brown- 

 ish gray ; underparts sordid white or pale buffy, tinged on sides and flanks with 

 stronger buffy. Bill slender, decurved, brownish black above paler below ; feet 

 and legs brown; iris dark brown. Length of adult male about 5.50 (139.7); 

 wing 2.50 (63.5); tail 2.39 (60.8); bill .63 (16); tarsus .59 (15). Female a 

 little smaller. 



Recognition Marks. — Warbler size; singularly variegated in modest colors 

 above ; the only brown creeper in its range. Lighter colored than the ne.xt. 



Nesting. — Nest: of twigs, bark-strips, moss, plant-down, etc., crowded be- 

 hind a warping scale of bark whether of cedar, pine or fir. Eggs: usually 5 or 6, 

 sometimes 7 or 8, white or creamy white speckled and spotted with cinnamon 

 brown or hazel, chiefly in wreath about larger end. Av. Size .61 x .47 (15.5X 

 II.9). 



General Range. — The Cascade-Sierra mountain system from Mt. Whitney 

 north to central British Columbia, east to Idaho ; displaced by succeeding form 

 on Pacific Coast slope save from ^larin County, California, southward. 



Range in Washington. — Resident in the Cascade Mountains, east in coni- 

 ferous timber to Idaho where intergrading with C. f. montana. 



Authorities. — ? Certhia familiaris iiiontana Johnson (Roswell H.), Condor, 

 Yol. \TII.. Jan. 1906, p. 27. 



Specimens. — U. of W. B. 



