200 BROWN CREEPER. 
The Brown Creeper is an extremely active and restless little bird. 
In winter it associates with the small Spotted Woodpecker, Nuthatch, 
Titmouse, &c., and often follows in their rear, gleaning up those insects 
which their more powerful bills had alarmed and exposed ; for its own 
slender incurvated bill seems unequal to the task of penetrating into 
even the decayed wood, though it may into holes and behind scales of 
ilie 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 regularity 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 disappears behind the trunk, take your stand 
behind an adjoining one, and keep a sharp lookout 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. In a minute or two, hearing all still, he will make his 
appearance on one side or other of the tree, and give you an opportu- 
nity of observing him. 
These birds are distributed over the Avhole 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 dif- 
ference ; the colors indeed were rather more vivid and intense in some 
