BROWN CREEPER. 
65 
of their plumage, I could find little or no difference; the colours 
indeed were rather more vivid and intense in some than in 
others; but sometimes this superiority belonged to a male, some- 
times to a female and appeared to be entirely owing to difference 
in age. I found, however, a remarkable and very striking differ- 
ence 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 of the usual size. Whether 
this be only an accidential variety, or whether the male, when 
full grown, be naturally so much larger than the female (as is 
the case with many birds), and takes several years in arriving 
at his full size, I cannot positively determine, though I think 
the latter most probable. 
The Brown Creeper builds his nest in the hollow trunk or 
branch of a tree, where the tree has been shivered, or a limb 
broken off, or where squirrels or Woodpeckers have wrought 
out an entrance: for nature has not provided him with the means 
of excavating one for himself. I have known the female begin 
to lay by the seventeenth of April. The eggs are usually seven, 
of a dull cinereous, marked with small dots of reddish yellow, 
and streaks of dark brown. The young come forth with great 
caution, creeping about long before they venture on wing. 
From the early season at which they begin to build, I have no 
doubts of their raising two broods during summer, as I have 
seen the old ones entering holes late in July. 
The length of this bird is five inches, and nearly seven from 
the extremity of one wing to that of the other; the upper part 
of the head is of a deep brownish black; the back brown, and 
both streaked with white, the plumage of the latter being of a 
VOL. II.— I 
