Brewster on the American Brown Creeper. 201 



insect life, forms an attraction too powerful to be overlooked. The 

 place just described proved to be no exception to this ride. The 

 spruce tops were filled with busy flitting Warblers of various spe- 

 cies, some of them migratory individuals resting for a few hours 

 before resuming their northward journey ; others already mated, 

 and established for the brief season of reproduction so near at hand. 

 Among the stubs, Woodpeckers were swinging from trunk to trunk, 

 or entering their neatly rounded holes with food for their mates or 

 young. From a dead branch that overhung the thicket beneath, a 

 Water Thrush (Siurus ncevius) uttered his gushing warble, while 

 at intervals, in the cool depths of the forest on the mountain side, 

 arose the exquisite liquid notes of a Winter Wren. Such were a 

 few of the more prominent actors in the varied scene. 



Among the other voices I shoi'tly detected the sweet wild song 

 of the Brown Creeper, and, looking more carefully, spied a pair of 

 these industrious little gleaners winding their way up the trunk of 

 a neighboring tree. Although I watched them closely, the female 

 soon after in some way eluded my sight and mysteriously disap- 

 peared, but the male remained in the immediate vicinity, singing 

 at frequent intervals. Being convinced that they must have a nest 

 somewhere near, I institiited a careful search among the dead trees 

 that stood around, and at length detected a scale of loose bark, 

 within which was crammed a suspicious-looking mass of twigs and 

 other rubbish. A vigorous rapping upon the base of the trunk 

 producing no effect, I climbed to the spot and was about to tear 

 off the bark, when the frightened Creeper darted out within a few 

 inches of my face, and the next moment I looked in upon the eggs. 



The tree selected was a tall dead fir, that stood in the shallow 

 water just outside the edge of the living forest, but surrounded by 

 numbers of its equally unfortunate companions. Originally killed 

 by inundation, its branches had long ago yielded to the fury of the 

 winter storms, and the various destroying agents of time had 

 stripped off the greater part of the bark until only a few persistent 

 scales remained to chequer the otherwise smooth, mast-like stem. 

 One of these, in process of detachment, had started away from the 

 trunk below, while its upper edges still retained a comparatively 

 firm hold, and within the space thus formed the cunning little archi- 

 tect had constructed her nest. The whole width of the opening 

 had first been filled with a mass of tough but slender twigs (many 

 of them at least six inches in length), and upon this foundation the 



