66 LAND-BIRDS. 



is repeated, more deliberately and less querulously in the breed- 

 ing-season than at other times ; a fact which I also have 

 noticed. It is, however, varied considerably in pitch at all 

 times of the year. 



§ 6. CERTHIID^. Creepers. (See § 4.) 



I. CERTHIA. 



A. FAMiLiARis AMERICANA. BrowTi Creeper. In eastern 

 Massachusetts, very rare in summer, but common in winter.* 



a. About b\ inches long. Bill, slender and decurved ; tail- 

 feathers, rigid and acuminate (as in other Certhiince). Below, 

 white. Tail, unmarkedo Other upper parts, curiously and 

 finely marked with several browns and whitish. 



h. Wilson says that " the Brown Creeper builds his nest 

 in the hollow trunk or branch of a tree, where the tree has 

 been shivered, or a limb broken off, or where squirrels or 

 Woodpeckers have wrought out an entrance, for nature has not 

 provided him with the means of excavating one for himself." 

 Mr. Gregg (in a " Catalogue of the Birds of Chemung County, 

 New York ") says that ^' the nest of this species is built of dry 

 twigs attached to the sides of some perj^endicular object " ; and 

 that he " discovered one on the attic of a deserted log house ; 

 the nest rested upon the inner projection of the gable clap- 

 board, and was cemented together with a gummy or gelatinous 

 substance." The only nest that I have found in the neighbor- 

 hood of Boston was a few feet from the ground, placed in the 

 cavity formed by the reuding of a tree by lightning. The 

 eggs, which were fresh on the twentieth day of May, were 

 grayish white, speckled with reddish brown, chiefly at the 

 larger end, and measured about .60 X .50 of an inch. A nest 

 containing young, found in a New Hampshire forest, was much 

 like one found " in a large elm in Court Square, Springfield, 

 about ten feet from the ground, and built behind a strip of 



* In southern New England the its normal summer range is limited very 

 Brown Creeper is a very common spring strictly to the Canadian fauna. It 

 and autumn migrant and a not uncom- breeds regularly on Mount Graylock, 

 mon winter resident. Although it has in western Massachusetts, and through- 

 been twice found nesting in eastern out the spruce forests of northern New 

 Massachusetts and once at Springfield, England. — W. B. 



