82 BROWN CREEPER. 
insects which their more powerful bills had alarmed and exposed ; 
for its own slender, incurvated bill seems unequal to the task of pen- 
etrating into even the decayed wood; though it may into holes, and 
behind scales of the bark. Of the Titmouse, there are, generally, 
present the individuals of a whole family, and seldom more than one 
or two of the others. As the party advances through the woods from 
tree to tree, our little gleaner seems to observe a good deal of regu- 
larity in his proceedings; for I have almost always observed that he 
alights on the body near the root of the tree, and directs his course, 
with great nimbleness, upwards, to the higher branches, sometimes 
spirally, often in a direct line, moving rapidly and uniformly along, 
with his tail bent to the tree, and not in the hopping manner of the 
Woodpecker, whom he far surpasses in dexterity of climbing, running 
along the lower side of the horizontal branches with surprising ease. 
If any person be near when he alights, he is sure to keep the opposite 
side of the tree, moving round as he moves, so as to prevent him from 
getting more than a transient glimpse of him. The best method of 
outwitting him, if you are alone, is, as soon as he alights, and disap- 
pears behind the trunk, take your stand behind an adjoining one, and 
keep a sharp look-out twenty or thirty feet up the body of the tree he 
is upon,—for he generally mounts very regularly to a considerable 
height, examining the whole way as he advances. Ina minute or two, 
hearing all still, he will make his appearance on one side or other of 
the tree, and give you an opportunity of observing him. 
These birds are distributed over the whole United States, but are 
most numerous in the Western and Northern States, and particularly so 
in the depth of the forests, and in tracts of large timbered woods, where 
they usually breed, visiting the thicker settled parts of the country in 
fall and winter. They are more abundant in the flat woods of the 
lower district of New Jersey than in Pennsylvania, and are frequently 
found among the pines. Though their customary food appears to con- 
sist of those insects of the coleopterous class, yet I have frequently 
found in their stomachs the seeds of the pine-tree, and fragments of a 
species of fungus that vegetates in old wood, with generally a large 
proportion of gravel. There seems to be scarcely any difference 
between the colors and markings of the male and female. In the 
month of March, I opened eleven of these birds, among whom were 
several females, as appeared by the clusters of minute eggs with 
which their ovaries were filled, and also several well-marked males ; 
and, on the most careful comparison of their plumage, I could find 
little or no difference; the colors, indeed, were rather more vivid and 
intense in some than in others: but somet:mes this superiority be- 
longed to a male, sometimes to a female, and appeared to be entirely 
owing to difference in age. I found, however, a remarkable and very 
striking difference 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, 
