The Brown Creepers 
This latter it is which one can never quite certainly distinguish from that 
of the Western Golden-crowned Kinglet. The full song is, indeed, 
very sweet and dainty, with a bit of a plaintive quality, which serves 
to distinguish it from the utterances of the Wood Warblers, once you 
are accustomed. 
A knowledge of the Creeper’s nesting habits would be quite unattain¬ 
able were the bird to choose the tree-tops; but with characteristic humility 
it seeks the lower levels at the nesting season, so that one need not look 
much above his head in searching for its nest. The dainty charm of 
the Creeper’s nest, as well as its cunning seclusion, gives zest to a search 
which in the case of several veteran nidologists has been almost a passion. 
If the Creeper had not told us, we should scarcely be aware of the 
tendency of bark, especially in the case of dead trees, to warp and curl 
away from the parental stem. But the Creeper found this out early 
in the game, so behind the sprung bark scale his nest is neatly and often 
invisibly ensconced. Showing, as it does in California, a strong preference 
for evergreen trees, the bird uses only such other deciduous host-trees 
as happen to be closely associated with firs or pines. Its commoner 
preference is for the incense cedar (Libocedrus decurrens ) in the Sierras, 
or for the Redwood (Sequoia sempervirens ) in the coastal region. In 
both these trees great vertical strips of bark are likely to become detached 
at the lower end and to warp up slowly from the bottom. In such case 
the Creepers avail themselves of the certain shelter from rain which 
is provided by the uppermost angle of attachment, even though the 
yawning space below has to be bridged or floored, by twigs and bark- 
fragments laboriously braced. For the felted mass of the nest proper 
the bird requires little besides the fine shredded bark, as soft as satin, 
of cedar or redwood. But if the host-tree happens to be a fir or maple 
scorched by a quick running fire and so yielding a bent plate or two, 
the excess space of the cavity chosen is first filled up with sticks, bark- 
strips, moss, cotton and every other sort of woodsy loot. As the top 
is approached, only materials of exquisite fineness are chosen, and into 
the upper stratum of the crescent-shaped cushion so formed (its out¬ 
lines being determined by the curve of the tree trunk, and the sharper 
curve of the springing bark scale) a deep cup is sunk,—the nesting 
hollow proper. 
Bark scales of exactly suitable dimensions are not always to be 
had; and the very charm of Creeper nests lies in their great variety, and 
in the pluckily skillful adaptiveness displayed in their construction. 
Here is a nest which enjoys a three inch fairway between trunk and 
bark—room to burn! while here is another so scanted, one and a quarter 
inches, that the wood must serve for sidewalls in the inner cavity, while 
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