Monday, April 5, 2021

A Brown Creeper!

I'll bet most of you have never even seen a Brown Creeper or know what it is, though it's more common than you'd think.  It's perfectly camouflaged you see, and terribly hard to pick out when it's poking its way up a tree trunk, which is where you're most likely to see it.  But I'll bring you up-to-date on our other bird observations too, which have actually been remarkably few.

Our little flock of Chickadees are our most common visitors, and they're still passing through briefly several times a day.  I have lots of pictures of them at the feeders, but less often sitting in their natural habitat - a tree!  They will disappear for nesting in the woods soon.

The White-breasted Nuthatch is usually with them, but it's very hard to get a good picture, it moves so fast.

Occasionally we see a Downy Woodpecker or a Red-bellied Woodpecker like this one.

And last week a Song Sparrow arrived back.  Perhaps our most common sparrow, I know it for its easy-to-recognize melodious song, which it typically sings from the top of a shrub all day long in warmer weather.  You can see it has two dark cheek patches, and a dark spot on its breast.

And this is the Brown Creeper.  I picked the photo which I thought was easiest to see against the very similarly coloured bark to show you first.  This is heavily cropped, but taken with my Nikon rather than my iphone.

I've cropped it even more here to show you the downward pointing bill which it uses to dig tiny bugs out of the bark.  This bird can almost be identified by its behaviour, as it hitches its way up the tree in short hops, probing into the bark crevices as it goes.

So now that you know what it looks like, can you find it on this original photo?

This cropping should help you.  Brown Creepers are not terribly rare, though I've only seen one once or twice before in my life.  But they sure are hard to spot.

To end on a more colourful note, here's a Cardinal that only visited once, but soon I'll be hearing it calling from the tops of trees on my rides.







15 comments:

  1. Our Tree-Creeper is a very similar bird - and similarly difficult to spot. I used to see more of them than I do these days, but that's more to do with my eyesight than there being less birds.

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  2. So nice to see your photographs, it is difficult to spot this bird unlike the wonderful red of the cardinal.

    All the best Jan

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  3. Stephen Hawking Net Worth You seem to be very professional in the way you write.::’~*

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  4. Our Song Sparrows have slightly different markings but sing the song that makes them easy to identify.
    I have been lucky to spot the Little Brown Creeper twice in the park where I walk. Only saw it because it was climbing a tree. It really is hard to spot them.
    Someday I'd like to see a Cardinal. Beautiful birds!!

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  5. I've never even heard of a brown creeper but see lots of cardinals around here.

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  6. Brown Creepers are quite common at this time of year, and are really not so hard to spot if you get out and look. There are a couple of local spots where they seem to be on every tree.

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  7. I've never seen the brown creeper...or if I did I didn't see it. :p
    The juncos are coming through now, the chickadees are still around but less and I've seen a few sparrows as well. Sadly the merlin is back too but so far I haven't seen it in the yard. There is a robin that seems to have set up in the spruce tree in front, and those darned grackles are back too.

    Thanks for sharing the photos! Take care.

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  8. I can’t find the creeper. It is well camouflaged.

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  9. I've only ever seen one, but didn't have a good look at the beak. Very cool little fellow.

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  10. Great pictures of the birds and thanks for the lesson.
    That's the problem with living in the city you don't see all the wonders of nature.
    Be Safe and Enjoy!

    It's about time.

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  11. Your right, that Brown Creeper is sure hard to spot on that tree. I'm not sure if I have ever seen one but if I do I will know what it is now.

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  12. Brown creepers aren't just had to spot, they're fast as they move up and around a tree. A friend and I once found a brown creeper's nest beneath a large loose strip of bark. Good catches on those photos of the creeper.

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  13. Jeepers Creepers. I think I spotted it.

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  14. Thank for the introduction to the creeper. I had never heard of it before, and I sure see why they are not easy to spot. I never did find it on that tree. :-)

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  15. Nicely done on the creepers! They are fast, but very obviously a creeper as it goes head first up the tree. The focus is my problem!

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