BROWN CREEPER. 65 



of their plumage, I could find little or no difference; the colours 

 indeed were rather more vivid and intense in some than in 

 others; but sometimes this superiority belonged to a male, some- 

 times to a female and appeared to be entirely owing to difference 

 in age. I found, however, a remarkable and very striking differ- 

 ence in their sizes; some were considerably larger, and had the bill 

 at least one-third longer and stronger than the others, and these 

 I uniformly found to be males. I also received two of these birds 

 from the country bordering on the Cayuga lake, in New York 

 state, from a person who killed them from the tree in which 

 they had their nest. The male of this pair had the bill of the 

 same extraordinary size with several others I had examined 

 before, the plumage in every respect the same. Other males, 

 indeed, were found at the same time of the usual size. Whether 

 this be only an accidental variety, or whether the male, when 

 full grown, be naturally so much larger than the female (as is 

 the case with many birds), and takes several years in arriving 

 at his full size, I cannot positively determine, though I think 

 the latter most probable. 



The Brown Creeper builds his nest in the hollow trunk or 

 branch of a tree, where the tree has been shivered, or a limb 

 broken off, or where squirrels or Woodpeckers have wrought 

 out an entrance: for nature has not provided him with the means 

 of excavating one for himself. I have known the female begin 

 to lay by the seventeenth of April. The eggs are usually seven, 

 of a dull cinereous, marked with small dots of reddish yellow, 

 and streaks of dark brown. The young come forth with great 

 caution, creeping about long before they venture on wing. 

 From the early season at which they begin to build, I have no 

 doubts of their raising two broods during summer, as I have 

 seen the old ones entering holes late in July. 



The length of this bird is five inches, and nearly seven from 

 the extremity of one wing to that of the other; the upper part 

 of the head is of a deep brownish black; the back brown, and 

 both streaked with white, the plumage of the latter being of a 



VOL. II. 1 



