Paean to the Brown Creeper

I saw my first Brown Creepers of the year yesterday, one at the pond on Schoolhouse Rd, the other poking at the bark of a skinny pitch pine in our backyard. Then again today, inspecting the nooks and crannies of the dead oak that serves as our feeder station. I love the Brown Creeper; it might be my favorite winter bird. First of all, it's always a treat to just find one. Not that they're rare, they're just really hard to see being the color of bark and moving fast to another tree just at the moment you've spotted one peripherally. Me getting a photo of one is a miracle. Only recently have I been made aware of its thin, high-pitched call. Doesn't matter really to me; it would have to be on my shoulder before I'd hear it. 

Secondly, they're unique in North America, the only representative of the creeper family Certhiidae. 

And finally, watching them forage for food intrigues me. I know all winter birds are amazing survivalists, but the chickadees, nuthatches, titmice, sparrows, all subsist mostly on seeds (which we put out in abundance). Even the woodpeckers glom onto the suet and peanuts to supplement their diet.  The creeper is an insectivore. It never eats seeds and never comes to the feeder. I always wondered, on a day like today, well below freezing, what insects is it getting? A modicum of research showed me that my notion of what the bird was feeding on was just slightly off. 

In the winter, it isn't insects per se that the creeper is searching for when it sticks it long decurved bill beneath a bit of raised bark. It is insect eggs and pupae that it is trying to find. What a life! What a job! Compare the chickadee, which has to eat constantly, but has 5 lbs of seed hanging from a tree right in front of it. Even in the woods the seeds of plants and grasses are dispersed everywhere. The creeper, though, has to methodically climb a tree, picking out an egg here, a chrysalis there, then fly to the bottom of the next tree and start all over again. Prospecting for the tiniest packages of calories. 

One of the saddest birding sights I ever saw was a few years ago on Great Bay Blvd. It was mid-October and big push of birds were migrating through. Suddenly, on the road, was a Brown Creeper, apparently so exhausted that it couldn't make it to the stand of cedars 25 feet away. It is the only time I have ever seen a creeper on the ground. 

But aside from that incident, all the other 200 times (according to eBird) that I've seen the creeper has brought a smile to my face.