BROWN CREEPER. 
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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, of the usual size. Whether this be only an 
accidental 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 17th 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 daring 
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 
loose texture, with its filaments not adhering ; the white is in 
the centre of every feather, and is skirted with brown ; lower 
part of the back, rump, and tail-coverts, rusty brown, the last 
