BIRDS OF THE CAMBRIDGE REGION. 



373 



and for several weeks afterwards one may be reasonably sure of finding the inter- 

 esting little birds in any extensive tract of woodland where large, rough-barked 

 trees, such as pines, oaks or hemlocks, abound. As many as three or four 

 Creepers are occasionally seen together, but as a rule they occur singly, often 

 in more or less close companionship with Chickadees, Kinglets, Nuthatches and 

 Downy Woodpeckers. They are by no means confined to the woods, for there 

 are few old apple orchards in the farming districts which they do not visit more 

 or less regularly. They also come freely and fearlessly into our cities and larger 

 towns where they may be often seen ascending the trunks of the elms and other 

 large trees that shade parks, lawns and even much frequented streets. Most of 

 the birds which occur in autumn pass still further southward before the close of 

 November, but a few always remain through the winter and Creepers are some- 

 times rather numerous at that season. 



Mr. C. F. Batchelder tells me that on July 17, 1878, he saw a Brown 

 Creeper on an elm in the grounds immediately about his house on Kirkland 

 Street, Cambridge. As this date is nearly two months earlier than that on 

 which migrants ordinarily begin to arrive from the north, it is probable that the 

 bird just mentioned had come from some breeding ground at no great distance 

 from the locality where it was observed. 



The Brown Creeper has been found breeding at a number of localities in 

 eastern Massachusetts. Dr. Brewer, writing in 1 879, says : " I have known of 

 its nesting . . . .near Lynn, Mass., and last summer in Taunt(jn," 1 where a nest 

 containing young, nearly full grown, was found by Mr. Charles T. Snow, on 

 May 27, 1878. There is a still earlier record, by Mr. Minot, of a nest with eggs 

 which he found "on the twentieth day of May" in the neighborhood of Boston 

 and which was " placed in the cavity formed by the rending of a tree by light- 

 ning." 2 On May 23, 1900, Dr. Arthur P. Chadbourne took me to the nest of a 

 Creeper which he had discovered a week or two before in an extensive cedar 

 swamp at North Scituate, Massachusetts. Like the nest described by Mr. 

 Minot, it was in the riven trunk of a tree that had been split either by lightning 

 or by some violent gust of wind.^ It contained young at the time of my visit. 

 In 1898 a Creeper's nest was found at Andover, Massachusetts, by the late Mr. 

 Howard S. Ford of that place, who wrote me that " it was in a dead oak, placed 

 within a sheath of loose bark about four feet from the ground. The tree stands 

 in an oak grove which lies between cultivated fields on the one hand, and an 

 extensive swamp on the other." This nest was discovered on April 26, when it 



' T. M. Brewer, Bulletin of the Nuttall Ornithological Club, IV, 1879, 88. 

 2 H. D. Minot, Land-birds and Game-birds of New England, 1877, 6S. 

 ■'A. P. Chadbourne, Auk, XXII, 1905, 179-183. 



