60 BULLETIN 195, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



A creeper's nest presents an odd appearance when it and the bark 

 to which it adheres firmly are removed from the tree. In shape it is 

 like a loosely hung hammock or a new moon, the horns built high up 

 at the sides of the nest, which seems to hang suspended between them. 

 The structure bears a striking resemblance to those little windrows 

 that we see on a forest path after the passing of a summer shower 

 when the flowing water has pushed along the loose twigs, leaves, and 

 pine needles and has left them lying in long, curved heaps, crescent- 

 shaped like the creeper's nest. 



The nest is apparently built entirely by the female bird, but her 

 mate often brings in nesting material and delivers it to her. I quote 

 from my notes (Winsor M. Tyler, 1914) taken as I watched a pair 

 building a nest in Lexington, Mass., in 1913 : 



When we first came upon the pair, the female was making long flights from the 

 nest. Slie brought in bits of bark and some fuzzy material (fern down or 

 caterpillar webbing). We saw her collect also bits of bark from nearby trees. 

 Twice at least the male brought material and delivered it (bark or dead wood) 

 to the female who was in the nest cavity. The female made half a dozen long 

 flights, returning every 2 minutes. Then she flew eight times in the next 10 

 minutes to a very small dead white pine a few yards away and returned each 

 time with one or more fine twigs. Often after returning with a twig 6 inches 

 long, she had some difficulty in forcing it through the entrance hole. She was 

 wise enough, however, to turn her head so that the twig might slip in end 

 first. Once, when she brought in a beakful of fern down, the material kept 

 catching on the rough bark and tripping her up, but by bending her neck backward 

 she was able to hold the stuff clear of the mark. In her trips to the little dead 

 pine, the Creeper always aliglited on the slender trunk, but in order to reach 

 the terminal twigs she had to hop out on the smaller branches. Sometimes, 

 when these were very small, she perched crosswise upon them ; often she crawled 

 around them, — her back to the earth. When perched, her tail hung straight 

 downward, like a Phoebe's or a Brown Thrasher's when he sings. She broke 

 off the twigs by tugging at them while perched or while fluttering in the 

 air * * * 



The use of both the fern down and the webbing is, I believe, to bind the twigs 

 together and to hold the nest to the bark, against which it rests. In the first 

 nest site, if it had not been for this adhesion, the nest would have fallen to 

 the ground of its own weight, for its base was unsupported. * * * 



The female flew to the nest with a bit of bark (2^2 X Vi inches) then pulled 

 from the protruding base of the nest a piece of fuzz and took it into the cavity. 

 Five minutes later she (or her mate) crept again to the base and pulled off 

 a bit of bark which she carried within. The economical habit of using material 

 twice (first for the foimdation and later for building the nest proper) is ap- 

 parently a common practice. We saw it again and again. 



Verdi Burtch (MS.) points out that the extensive killing of trees 

 furnishes brown creepers with many sites suitable for nesting. He 

 says : "In the very cold winter of 1903 or 1904, with water 2 to 3 feet 

 deep in Potter Swamp, New York, the ice froze to such a depth that 

 hundreds of trees were killed. A few years later, the bark below 

 the water line came off, and the bark higher up split and, curling in- 



