BROWN CREEPER. 131 
During the breeding season, our Creeper is a resident of the extensive northern or 
mountain forests. Here, in sylvan solitude remote from the noise and tumult of man, 
we find the nest, which, however, is not easily discovered. One of our leading ornitho- 
logists, Prof. Wm. Brewster, of Cambridge, Mass., has given us in his fascinating 
manner, the best description of the Creeper and its nidification we possess.* In May 
and June, 1879, this distinguished naturalist and writer spent his time on Lake Umbagog, 
in western Maine, paying especial attention to the Creeper’s breeding habits. 
“Throughout the heavily timbered region,” he writes, ‘‘bordering on Lake Umbagog 
the Brown Creeper is of regular occurrence during the breeding season. It is never an 
abundant species there, but each square mile of suitable woodland is pretty sure to 
harbor a pair or two, and in places along the lake shores, where numerous decaying 
stubs form an outer fringe to sombre forests of spruce and fir, the combination of 
favorable conditions attraé&ts them in somewhat greater numbers. Any considerable 
collection of these stubs is nearly certain to afford one or more trees in just the right 
stage of decay essential for nesting purposes, while the adjoining woodlands offer the 
shade and seclusion so congenial to their solitary habits during this season. It was in 
a locality of this character that the first nest taken during the past season was found. 
Let me briefly sketch the picture ere it fades. 
“I had crossed the lake to a sheltered cove which opened an inviting way into 
the tangled forest. On either hand, heavily wooded ridges sloped steeply down to the 
water’s edge, cutting off the high north-wind that was blowing over the lake outside, 
and the warm sunshine lay upon a smooth basin that was seldom dimpled by even a 
passing breeze. At its farther extremity, where a mossy bank rose abruptly from the 
shore, graceful hemlocks laved the tips of their drooping branches in the water, and tall 
firs and spruces looked down upon the perfect reflection of their stiff, soldierly forms in 
the mirror-like surface beneath. Here and there, where the land was more level and the 
water flowed back among the trees, grim stubs, many of them hung with streamers of 
the yellowish-gray Usnea ‘moss,’ stood grouped about, adding to the picturesqueness of 
the scene. These quiet little nooks abound about most of the Maine lakes, and they are 
almost invariably well stocked with birds. The retirement that they offer, coupled with 
the increased abundance of insect life, forms an attraction too powerful to be over- 
looked. The place just described proved to be no exception to this rule. The spruce 
tops were filled with busy flitting Warblers of various species, some of them migratory 
individuals resting for a few hours before resuming their northward journey; others 
already mated, and established for the brief season of reproduction so near at hand. 
Among the stubs, Woodpeckers were swinging from trunk to trunk, or entering their 
neatly rounded holes with food for their mates or young. From a dead branch that 
overhung the thicket beneath, a Water Thrush (Siurus nevius) uttered its gushing 
warble, while at intervals, in the cool depths of the forest on the mountain side, arose 
the exquisite liquid notes of a Winter Wren. Such were a few of the more prominent 
actors in the varied scene. 
“Among the other voices I shortly detected the sweet wild song of the Brown 
Creeper, and, looking more carefully, spied a pair of these industrious little gleaners 
* Bulletin Nuttall Club, IV, 1879, pp. 199—209, 
