BROWN CREEPER. 
197 
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 look- 
out 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 opportunity of observing him. 
These birds are distributed over the whole 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 
consist of those insects, known by the general name of 
bugs, 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 colours 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 difference ; the colours, 
indeed, were rather more vivid and intense in some 
than in others ; but sometimes this superiority belonged 
to a male, 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 
