BROWN CREEPER 57 



upon small groups of three to six individuals in the woods, all within 

 a few yards of one another. Perhaps not another individual would 

 be seen for an hour or even during the entire morning. This apparent 

 concentration of birds within localized areas led me to believe that a 

 more or less concerted movement was taking place and that the species 

 traveled in loose groups, not close enough to be termed flocks." 



Courtshij). — The creeper's courtship appears to consist of a display 

 of agility in the air. Once in a while we see a bird launch out from a 

 tree and at top speed twine around it close to the bark, then dart 

 away and twist around another tree, or weave in and out among the 

 surrounding trees and branches. He has thrown off his staid creeper 

 habits and has become for the time a care-free aerial sprite, giving 

 himself up, it seems, to an orgy of speed, wild dashes, and twists 

 and turns in the air. But after a round or two, back on the bark 

 again, he resumes his conventional routine and becomes once more a 

 brown creeper. 



Chreswell J. Hunt (1907) describes a somewhat similar excursion 

 through the air, associated with the pursuit of another creeper. He 

 says: 



It was ou March 9, 1904, * * * that I saw two Brown Creepers engaged 

 in this game of tag. In my experience the Brown Creeper always alights near 

 the base of a tree trunk and then works upward, his course being a spiral oae — 

 he travels round and round as lie climbs upward. In the pursuit I speak of this 

 same program was carried out, only instead of climbing up the trunk the birds 

 would fly up. They alighted near each other upon the tree, then number one 

 would take wing and fly upward, describing one or two complete spirals about 

 the trunk and again alight upon it with number two following in close pursuit. 

 To travel in a spiral course seemed to be such a well formed habit that they 

 could not get away from it. It was not simply a chance flight, for I saw it 

 repeated again and again. 



Nesting. — There is a bit of interesting history in regard to the 

 nesting of the brown creeper. Alexander Wilson (Wilson and Bona- 

 parte, 1832) says: "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 excavat- 

 ing one for himself." He saj^^s nothing, however, about the nest 

 itself. Thomas Nuttall's (1832) remarks on the situation of the nest 

 consist, as usual, in a rephrasing of Wilson's report, but Audubon 

 (1841a), while obviously copying Wilson in speaking of the situation 

 of the nest, adds that he himself has found nests, saying: "All the 

 nests which I have seen were loosely formed of grasses and lichens 

 of various sorts, and warmly lined with feathers, among which I in 

 one instance found some from the abdomen of Tetrao Umbellus.'''' 



Many years later, with the idea of setting right a long-standing 

 error of the older ornithologists as to the situation of the creeper's 



