I 80 Chadbourne, Nesting Habits of the Bro-w?i Creeper. [_Apr. 



pines to the south; and on the other sides more or less cedar 

 and mixed second-growth hardwood. On the southern edge of 

 this cleared strip was an old wind-shaken white cedar 1 which, 

 with a few of its fellows and half a dozen hemlocks and white 

 pines, were the sole remnants of the large old timber which 

 had formerly covered the clearing. Beneath these old trees, and 

 throughout the swamp was the usual undergrowth of ferns, thick 

 sphagnum moss, mountain laural bushes, black alder, etc. ; while 

 beneath, the black mud and water was bridged by the roots, 

 and decaying stumps of dead trees, and even in midsummer the 

 air was damp and not unlike the mossy northern woods where 

 the Creepers and other northern birds are habitually found in the 

 nesting season. 



The morning of May n, 1900, the day of the so-called "May 

 freeze," I started a Creeper from the ground under a clump of 

 cinnamon ferns (Osmum/a dn/iamomea), where she was gathering 

 the soft yellow down from the young fronds. The bird quickly 

 flew to the trunk of the nest tree, hesitated a moment, then with 

 a horizontal run sideways and most decidedly crablike, she disap- 

 peared with her load in the upper part of a rift which extended 

 completely through the trunk of the tree for a distance of five feet 

 or more from the base, as is clearly shown in the photograph 

 (Plate VI). It took the Creeper a long time to arrange the down 

 to her satisfaction, and her mate three times brought her food 

 while she was hidden within the soft materials of the nest. 

 In about fifteen minutes she flew out and began zigzagging 

 up, and occasionally backed down, the trunk of a neighboring 

 tree, looking for insects. It was fully thirty minutes before she 

 returned to the nest, but during the latter part of the time I had 

 lost sight of her, and when she returned it was with another load 

 of fern-down. The crack, or rift, near the top of which the nest 

 was placed, extended completely through the tree trunk from 

 northeast to southwest, and at the level of the top of the nest was 

 about eight inches in width from side to side ; while the space 



1 When a swamp has been cut off the trees which border it are exposed to 

 the northeast storms, and many of them, either blown down or partly uprooted, 

 lean against their fellows. 



