ing and the morning- after. It must be that his long, thin, curved bill or those 

 apparently sharp eyes are less efficient in finding food hidden in the cracks of 

 the bark than those of the chickadee or nuthatch, who stop now and again to 

 look about on the world or to play ; or, that the creeper is more particular about 

 his diet. Certain it is that the nuthatch and chickadee are fond of suet, and 

 when they find a tree on which it is fastened they return to it daily. Not so 

 the brown creeper ; in our experience, it proves no attraction to him. We remem- 

 ber to have watched one once as he neared a piece of suet while creeping up 

 one of our trees. He sampled it and passed on without lingering or offering 

 any other expression of approval. 



In climbing a tree, the creeper sometimes follows a straight course up the 

 bole. Much more frequently, he seems to know that the tree will furnish more 

 food if he climbs the spiral staircase of its trunk until he reaches the smooth bark 

 where there arc no cracks or where the harvest is too small to waste valuable 

 time upon. 



In this spiral journey he is so intent that you may approach to within a few 

 feet of his tree. He may notice you, and keep the tree between himself and you, 

 or he may ignore you altogether. 



The picture is a good one, and shows very well the bark-like mixture of 

 brown and white on back and wings, the red-brown of the rump, the brownish 

 gray of the long, harsh, pointed tail, the white of the under parts, and the dis- 

 tinctly curved bill. Unless you imagine that the little birch tree is within three 

 or four feet of you, the bird will appear too large, for the figure is life size. If 

 you will watch the little fellow while he is at work you will notice that he sits 

 closer to the tree, in fact he often appears to have flattened himself out against 

 it. Perhaps that is in cold weather, for the woodpeckers and nuthatch, when it 

 is cold, sit close enough to cover their feet with their feathers, as if to keep 

 them warm. 



The creeper is not always as silent as when he is on the I'ournev northward. 

 When he has reached his journey's end and has become occupied with mating 

 and the cares of the nest, he finds time to indulge in a short bit of a song, a 

 sweet little song, but like the bird, soft and subdued. 



The writer's acf|uaintance with the brown creeper began one wintry dav in 

 early spring. A thud against the window pane called our attention, and on the 

 window sill lay a little bird ajjparently dead. We brought it into the house, and 

 as we held it in our palms and examined its markings it graduallv recovered 

 from its stinining shock, and by tiic time we had completed our examination 

 was apparcntlv as wt-ll as ever. .As soon as our hand was opened on the porch, 

 it promptly flew to the nearest tree and resumed its life work of hnntiuL; insect 

 eggs in the crevices of the l)ark. 



Ill 



