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/IDYLLS OF BIRD LIFE V 
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The tufted titmouse is especially valuable and much 
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respected for the number of insects he destroys during the Fall 
and Winter months. 
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Probably one of our least known Winter residents is the 
brown creeper. Like the tufted titmouse, he is about the size 
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of the English sparrow, brown above, and with ashy-gray 
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stripes, and small, oval-shaped gray mottles. Color is rather 
light on his head, increasing in shade to redish-brown near the 
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tail; the wings are brown, and underneath are covered with a 
gray-white. A slender, curving bill ornaments the creeper. 
This scrupulous little worker is the very* embodiment of per- 
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sistent diligence. He is usually seen in company with the nut¬ 
hatches, the chickadees and the kinglets, but at times becomes 
rather solitary, preferring to be alone. He is precision itself, 
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in the manner of obtaining food; beginning at the foot of some 
rough-barked tree, he silently climbs upward in a sort of spiral 
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fashion, now lost to sight on one side, then appearing just whejfe 
he is expected to, on the other. It takes him just about fifty 
seconds to finish a tree, with all his painstaking care. Then off 
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again to the foot of another tree, he repeats his spiral methods: 
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throughout the livelong day. 
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[ 132 ] 
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