530 
BIRDS OF NEW MEXICO 
It remains in the State through the winter, and was noted in December, 1882, 
at Las Vegas (Batchelder); December 19-29,1893, at Chama (Loring); and December 
17, 1902, on Salinas Peak in the San Andres Mountains (Gaut). According to 
Doctor Henry it used to winter at Fort Fillmore and Fort Thorn on the Rio Grande, 
and two specimens were taken March 3, 1903, in the same district at Mesilla Park 
(Ford). 
[It is a common spring visitor to the Santa Fe Indian School campus (Jensen, 
1922).]—W. W. Cooke. 
Nest. —Behind loosened bark or in similar cavities, about stumps or dead 
trees; made of felted materials and feathers. Eggs: Usually 5, white, spotted 
with reddish brown. 
Food. —Minute insects and insects’ eggs, also cocoons of tineid moths, small 
wasps, ants, and bugs, especially scales and plant lice, with some small caterpillars. 
As it remains in the United States throughout the year, it naturally secures hiber¬ 
nating insects and insects’ eggs, as well as spiders and spiders’ eggs, which are 
missed by the summer birds. On its bill of fare we find no product of husbandry 
nor any useful insects. Its tiny eyes are sharp enough to detect insects so small 
that most other species pass them by, and altogether the Creeper fills a unique 
place in the ranks of our insect destroyers (Henshaw). 
General Habits. —Adapted in bill, body, tail, and feet to climbing 
up but not down a tree trunk, a Creeper, on reaching the top of his 
trunk flies obliquely down to the foot of another tree and starts up 
again. Hearing the two characteristic, fine-drawn notes in the woods 
of the Wheeler Peak Amphitheater, we stopped to look for one and soon 
discovered a little streaked brown form rocking up a spruce trunk. 
Others were heard near by, giving not only the call notes but a fine 
low song. 
Lower down at 8,400 feet, in a yellow pine grove on Red River, the 
molt of a specimen taken August 16, 1904, was already completed, 
with the exception of a few pinfeathers on the head and back. In 
the Mogollon Mountains where a number of the Creepers were seen 
late in October, at our camp below the famous Socorro grade, they 
came into the trees with the first sun, mornings, in company with 
Ruby Kinglets, Mountain Chickadees, and Pygmy Nuthatches. They 
were often seen creeping along the underside of small spruce branches. 
A nest that Mr. Ligon found in the Black Range was thirty-five 
feet from the ground under the shell of a dead yellow pine. It had 
three entrances and when the parents had gone in with food at one, 
they would go out at another on the opposite side, and scale around 
the tree before flying away. On the return they would use the same 
caution, light low down and creep up to the nest. 
Easily overlooked in the dark coniferous forest, the little Brown 
Creeper is well worth patiently hunting for, when his remote notes, 
thin and high drawn, catch the ear as you pass along a mountain trail. 
Additional Literature.—Bailey, F. M., Bird-Lore, XVIIT, 229-233, 1916.— 
Bradbury, W. C., Condor, XXI, 49-52, 1919 (nest).— Tyler, W. M., Auk, XXXI, 
50-62, 1914. 
