66 BULLETIN 195, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



nearby, others climbing around the beam or upon the walls of the barn. 

 This, however, was enough, the birds were not molested further. We 

 waited awhile, but it was too dark already, and we could not see 

 whether the birds returned. Next evening, however, we were there 

 earlier, and had the satisfaction to know that the disturbance of the 

 previous night was apparently forgotten; altogether 11 birds entered 

 the beam, but it took quite a while, and much moving in and out, flying 

 back and forth, and climbing around the beam, nearby wall and trees 

 before everybody was settled for the night." 



Frederick V. Hebard writes : ''This familiar creeper, so common in 

 the Thomasvi lie-Tallahassee region, is absent or extremely rare in 

 southeastern Georgia, except in times of extremely dry weather. Its 

 nearsightedness is nowhere better illustrated than in our tangled 

 branches and river swamps where, instead of dropping to the base of a 

 tree after having reached the top of a nearby one, it drops only to the 

 point where the trunk emerges above the underbrush." 



Voice. — How seldom we should see the creeper if he did not sound 

 his little note ! Yet what a faint little note it is, the shortest, lightest 

 pronunciation of the letters ts. He utters it as he climbs upward over 

 the bark and as he flits downward to the base of the next tree. He 

 often gives also a longer, more characteristic note, which may be sug- 

 gested by the letters si-i-i-it, a long, high, ringing note, but not loud, 

 apparently broken into minute syllables so that it has a quavering 

 effect. This note resembles the sound made by a small steel chain, 

 which, held by the end and let fall, tinkles into a little heap. A third 

 note, more rarely heard, is a whistle, exquisitely pure, exceedingly 

 high, and, if it were not so tiny, piercingly sharp. It may be given as 

 a single long whistle or in a series of three or four shorter whistles. 

 This note is clearly not a modification of the song, for it is used in the 

 winter months and is not delivered with the cadence of the true song ; 

 it is, perhaps, a whistled form of the Bi-i-i-it note. 



The song of the creeper, heard rarely during migration, but com- 

 monly on the bird's nesting grounds, is one of the gems of bird music. 

 Most often a phrase of five notes, a dactyl and a trochee, it is a simple, 

 modest little strain, but it is delivered with such delicacy and dainti- 

 ness and in a tone so pure and sweet that when he sings we feel we are 

 listening to a delightful bit of verse. 



Aretas A. Saunders (MS.) says of it: "The song of the brown 

 creeper is rather rarely heard. I hear it once in several yeai'S in the 

 spring migration in April. On the breeding grounds the song evi- 

 dently continues till the middle of July or later. It is short, weak, and 

 very high-pitched. The pitch varies from the A above the highest 

 note on the piano to the E above that. Most of the songs begin with 

 a rather long note followed by one or two shorter notes that are a third 



