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Last March I made a presentation on birds to an allday Symposium of the Virginia Native Plant Society at Airlie. During the break following my slide show, a number of people came up with questions and stories about birds. A file card was placed in my hand. I took it, and read: “Please write about Brown Creepers.” I asked the small group which one had given me the card, the only answer was: “A lady. She has gone.” I wish I knew her name for she set me to thinking.
The Brown Creeper is a slim, small — only 4 3/4 inches — bird that searchers for insect food hidden in a tree trunk in a most distinctive and curious manner. The creeper is brown above, white below and has a long, thin, slightly decurved bill. The bird’s tail feathers are stiff like those of a woodpecker and the creeper uses its tail as a prop on vertical surfaces much as a woodpecker does.
For his journal entry for Dec. 11, 1855, Henry David Thoreau wrote about the Brown Creeper: “He is a low curve from point of beak to end of tail, resting flat against the tree.” It required considerable thinking on that for me to realize that it is very apt and wonderfully descriptive.
When searching a tree trunk for over-wintering insects and their eggs, the creeper starts at the base of the tree and circles the trunk upward. In this way the little bird misses very little; if he perceives that he has missed at patch of bark, the creeper makes a few jumps backward down the trunk. The little bird then continues his circular
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