iSA. Kennard and McKechnie, Brown Creeper. [Apr* 



but most numerous in winter. Found mostly in high open woods, 

 but also common in city. Breeds sparingly." Then he goes on to 

 say : " Mr. Bradley Hosford showed me a nest of this species June 

 2nd, 1863, containing young that had apparently been hatched for 

 some four or five days. The nest was in a large elm, in Court 

 Square, Springfield, about ten feet from the ground, and built 

 behind a strip of thick bark that projected in such a way as to 

 leave a protected cavity behind it." 



Then after a number of years H. D. Minot, in ' The Land Birds 

 and Game Birds of New England,' published in 1877, speaks on 

 page 68 of having found, presumably in the early 70's, ''in the 

 neighborhood of Boston," a nest containing fresh eggs, " a few feet 

 from the ground placed in the cavity formed by the rending of a 

 tree by lightning." 



Next, the late Dr. T. M. Brewer, in an article on ' The Ameri- 

 can Brown Creeper,' l writes of its nesting " recently near Lynn, 

 Mass.," and then of its nest being found "after a careful search 

 by Mr. Charles T. Snow of Taunton, on the 27th of May, 1878, 

 in the middle of a large maple swamp, where he had noticed the 

 presence of the bird for several previous summers, without being 

 able to discover its nest." This last evidence is of importance as 

 showing both the continued presence of the bird in this locality 

 for several years, as well as the difficulty in finding its nest. Then 

 he goes on to say, speaking of the nest: "This had been con- 

 structed between the bark and the trunk of a dead pitch pine," 

 and after further describing it says that "the young were just 

 leaving the nest, which was ten feet from the ground." 



With only the above records to fall back upon, although Stearns 

 and Coues 3 went to the extreme of speaking of this bird as "resi- 

 dent throughout New England and a common bird in all suitable 

 localities," it is only natural that at this time it was held that the 

 breeding of the Brown Creeper in eastern Massachusetts was of 

 "rare and exceptional occurrence." 



1 Bulletin of the Nuttall Ornithological Club, Vol. IV, No. 2, April, 1879, 

 pp. 88, 89. 



2 New England Bird Life, Vol. I, p. 90, 1881, by W. A. Stearns, edited by 

 Dr. Elliott Coues. 



