THE BROWN CREEPER 11 
him spending the whole day in satisfying his 
hunger. 
There is one thing to be said for such a life: 
the bird is never without something to take up 
his mind. In fact, if he enjoys the pleasures of 
the table half as well as some human beings seem 
to do, his life ought to be one of the happiest 
imaginable. 
How flat and thin he looks, and how perfectly 
his colors blend with the grays and browns of 
the mossy bark! No wonder it is easy for us to 
pass near him without knowing it. We under- 
stand now what learned people mean when they 
talk about the “ protective coloration” of ant- 
mals. A hawk flying overhead, on the lookout 
for game, must have hard work to see this bit 
of a bird clinging so closely to the bark as to be 
almost a part of it. 
And if a hawk does pass, you may be pretty 
sure the creeper will see him, and will flatten 
himself still more tightly against the tree and 
stay as motionless as the bark itself. He needs 
neither to fight nor to run away. His strength, 
as the prophet said, is to sit still. 
But look! As the creeper comes to the upper 
part of the tree, where the bark is less furrowed 
than it is below, and therefore less likely to con- 
ceal the scraps of provender that he is in search 
