The other day, while reading outside, I was frequently distracted by the mixed flocks of chickadees, finches, juncos, nuthatches and woodpeckers that moved about our farm. Then, a loner landed in the elm next to my chair and inched his way up the trunk.
The visitor was a brown creeper, down from the mountains for the winter. Brown creepers breed across Southern Canada, the Great Lakes Region and New England and southward through the Appalachians and mountain corridors of the West. There they favor mature forest where they construct their nest in loose bark or small tree cavities.
Usually seen alone during the winter months, brown creepers circle up tree trunks and large limbs, searching for insects, spiders and their eggs and larvae; they also visit suet blocks and consume small seeds. These "bark birds" are always a welcome sight among our more common avian neighbors.
