56 BULLETIN 195, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



Family CERTHIIDAE: Creepers 



CEKTHIA FAMILIARIS AMERICANA Bonaparte 



BROWN CREEPER 

 Plates 14, 15 



CoNTKIBUTED BY WiNSOB MaREETT TyLEB 

 HABITS 



The brown creeper, as he hitches along the bole of a tree, looks like 

 a fragment of detached bark that is defying the law of gravitation by 

 moving upward over the trunk, and as he flies off to another tree he 

 resembles a little dry leaf blown about by the wind. As he climbs 

 up the tree, he is feeding, picking up tiny bits of food that he finds 

 half-hidden in the crevices of bark along his path. In his search he 

 does not work like the woodpeckers, those skilled mechanics whose 

 work requires the use of carpenter's tools, the drill and chisel. The 

 creeper's success depends on painstaking scrutiny, thoroughness, 

 and almost, it seems, conscientiousness. Edmund Selous (1901), 

 speaking of the European tree-creeper, a bird close to ours in habit, 

 uses the exact word to show us the creeper at work. "His head," he 

 says, "which is as the sentient handle to a very delicate instrument, 

 is moved with such science, such dentistry, that one feels and appre- 

 ciates each turn of it." 



Spring. — The creeper is rather a solitary bird as we see it in its 

 winter quarters and in spring on the way northward to its summer 

 home. We often find it, to be sure, feeding near chickadees, nut- 

 hatches, and golden-crowned kinglets, but there seems to be no close 

 association between it and the other members of the gathering. The 

 creeper pays little or no attention to the birds about him and by no 

 means always follows them in their wanderings. 



There is little change in his behavior as spring advances; he is 

 the same calm, preoccupied searcher he has been all through the win- 

 ter, but before the close of March he may, on rare occasions, sing his 

 delicate song. When we hear it — a strangely wild song for so prosaic 

 a character — we, who live not too far from the creeper's northern 

 forests, suspect that the singer may have a mate, or is attempting to 

 acquire one, and if the song continues into May, and if the bird 

 frequents a locality where the trees are broken, burned, or dying, we 

 shall do well to look about for a nest, or the preparation for one, 

 because the bird often breeds well to the south of its normal range, 

 provided that the surroundings are favorable for nesting. 



Ordinarily we meet but one creeper, or at most two, in a woodland 

 of moderate extent, but Dayton Stoner (1932) states: "During May 

 1929 season, when the brown creeper was unusually common in several 

 districts on the south side of Oneida Lake [New York], I often came 



