Brown, Olive or Grayish Brown, and Brown and Gray Sparrowy Birds 
berries, wild cherries, worms, and insects upon which they have 
gormandized. 
Nuttall gives the cedar birds credit for excessive politeness 
to each other. He says he has often seen them passing a worm 
from one to another down a whole row of beaks and back again 
before it was finally eaten. 
When nesting time arrives—that is to say, towards the end of 
the summer—they give up their gregarious habits and live in pairs, 
billing and kissing like turtle-doves in the orchard or wild crab- 
trees, where a flat, bulky nest is rather carelessly built of twigs, 
grasses, feathers, strings—any odds and ends that may be lying 
about. The eggs are usually four, white tinged with purple and 
spotted with black. 
Apparently they have no moulting season; their prumage is 
always the same, beautifully neat and full-feathered. Nothing 
ever hurries or flusters them, their greatest concern apparently 
being, when they alight, to settle themselves comfortably between 
their over-polite friends, who are never guilty of jolting or crowd- 
ing. Few birds care to take life so easily, not to say indolently. 
Among the French Canadians they are called R&collet, from 
the color of their crest resembling the hood of the religious order 
of that name. Every region the birds pass through, local names 
appear to be applied to them, a few of the most common of 
which are given above. 
Of the three waxwings known to scientists, two are found 
in America, and the third in Japan. 
Brown Creeper 
(Certhia familiaris americana) Creeper family 
Length—5 to 5.75 inches. A little smaller than the English 
sparrow. 
Male and Female—Brown above, varied with ashy-gray stripes and 
small, lozenge-shaped gray mottles. Color lightest on head, 
increasing in shade to reddish brown near tail. Tail paler 
brown and long; wings brown and barred with whitish. 
Beneath grayish white. Slender, curving bill. 
Range—United States and Canada, east of Rocky Mountains. 
Migrations—April. September. Winter resident. 
This little brown wood sprite, the very embodiment of vir- 
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