110 
BROWN TREE-CREEPER. 
bird was really asleep, or wished to elude us, is more than I can affirm, 
although I am inclined toward the latter supposition, because toward 
night it retires to a hole, where frequently as many as a whole brood 
repose together, as I have on several occasions witnessed. 
When on the move, the Brown Creeper emits at short intervals a sharp, 
quick, rather grating note, peculiar to itself, and by which you may, if 
acquainted with it, discover from a distance of more than sixty yards, in 
calm weather, where it is. Yet, after all, it requires some time, and 
a good eye, to perceive it, if on one of the upper branches of a tall tree. 
The name of “ Gleaner,” applied to this bird, is, in my opinion, very inap- 
propriate ; for instead, of its following the different tribes of small Wood- 
peckers, or even Nuthatches, which, however, are at times found in company 
with it, I have seen our little hunter travel over every part of a large and 
tall tree, and afterwards remove to another, before the Woodpecker had 
hammered its way to a grub, which it knew to be under the bark ; and all 
the activity of our Nuthatches does not perhaps surpass that of the present 
species. Yet they all pursue their avocations at the same time, and now and 
then on the same trees, although this is by no means aconstanthabit with them. 
Wilson was of opinion that the Brown Creeper moves “rapidly and 
uniformly along, with his tail bent to the tree, and not in the hopping 
manner of the Woodpecker but I must differ from him, for the bird at 
each move actually hops, assisted by the pressure of its elastic tail, which 
indeed is the case with all our Woodpeckers, whether on the upper or the 
lower surface of a branch. This may be easily seen on placing a Brown 
Creeper in a cage containing a piece of a branch covered with scaly bark. 
This bird breeds in the hole of a tree, giving a marked preference to such 
as are small and rounded at the entrance. For this reason, perhaps, it often 
takes possession of the old and abandoned nests of our smaller Woodpeckers 
and Squirrels; but it is careless as to the height of the situation above the 
ground, for I have found its nest in a hole in a broken stump which I could 
reach with my hand, although I could not examine it on account of the hard- 
ness of the wood. All the nests which I have seen were loosely formed of 
grasses and lichens of various sorts, and warmly lined with feathers, among 
which I in one instance found some from the abdomen of Tetrao Umbellus. 
The eggs are from six to eight, but in some instances I have found only five, 
when I have supposed them to belong to a second brood. They measure 
five-eighths and three-fourths of an inch in length, four and a quarter eighths 
in their greatest breadth. Their ground-colour is white, with a yellowish 
tint, irregularly marked with red and purplish spots and dots, which are 
larger and more crowded toward the broad end, leaving a space at its apex 
nearly free, as is also the case with that of the narrow end ; there are small 
