BIRDS OF ESSEX COUNTY. 307 



303 [726] Certhia familiaris americana (Bonap.). 

 Brown Creeper. 



Permanent resident, very rare in summer, uncommon in winter, common 

 transient visitor ; September 2 1 to May 1 ; summer. 



Eggs: May 16. 



Dr. T. M. Brewer, 1 in a paper written in 1879, on the Brown Creeper, says : 

 " Since then I have known of its nesting in northern New Hampshire, in Maine 

 and more recently, near Lynn, Mass." With the exception of this case of Dr. 

 Brewer's, the Brown Creeper has not been reported as nesting in Essex County 

 and has generally been considered a bird of the Canadian zone. On May 1 ith, 

 1904, however, I found a pair of these birds in Hamilton in mixed woods of 

 white and pitch pines, oaks, and birches on the border of a red maple swamp. 

 I stood still and looked about for a probable nesting site. Within a few yards 

 of where I stood and close to the border of the swamp was a dead and decayed 

 trunk of a pitch pine that had broken off and was leaning at an angle of 45 ° 

 against a white oak. The bark of the pine was loose and had fallen off in sev- 

 eral places. The male Creeper in the meanwhile was singing and occasionally 

 flying to the female in play. She soon seized a pine needle, flew directly to the 

 dead pine and disappeared in a crack under the bark about ten feet from the 

 ground. The birds were very tame, flying close to me, and every now and then 

 the female would interrupt her search for insects by seizing a pine needle and 

 flying with it to the crack in the bark. Some of the materials of the nest pro- 

 truded from the crack lower down, and hooking a piece down with a stick, I 

 found them to consist of strips of bark, pine needles, cocoons, pieces of decayed 

 wood, and bits of branches of considerable size, all irregularly heaped together 



A week later the female was evidently sitting on her eggs but as an attempt 

 to climb the dead tree might have broken it clown and destroyed the nest, I left 

 it undisturbed. Incubation apparently went on normally and on June 24th I 

 came across the family of old and young nearly half a mile from the nest, which 

 was then deserted. 



One would hardly think of looking for this delicate, tree-loving bird on 

 Thatcher's Island, desolate, treeless, and wind-swept, yet on September 24th, 

 1904, I found there a couple of these little birds creeping on the steep surfaces 

 of the rocks. Observations like this bring to one's mind very forcibly the fact 

 that the rugged coast line is a great highway of bird migration. 



1 T. M. Brewer : Bull. Nuttall Orn. Club, vol. 4, p. 88, 1879. 



