Length: About 5½ inches.

Male and Female: Brown above, mottled with gray, buff, and white; under parts white. A whitish line over eye; bill long, curved; a bar of buff across wings; tail-feathers long, sharply pointed; upper tail-coverts bright reddish-brown.

Note: A faint, monotonous, skreek-skreek, skreek-skreek.

Song: According to Brewster, the brown creeper sings an unusually sweet song during the nesting season.

Habitat: Tree-trunks, which are carefully inspected by these industrious birds.

Range: Eastern North America. Breeds from Nebraska, Indiana, the mountains of North Carolina and Massachusetts north to southern Canada; also in the mountains of western North America from Alaska to Nicaragua; winters over most of its range.

The Brown Creeper should inherit the earth, for he is one of the most perfect examples of meekness that may be found. Small, slight, self-effacing, untiring in his work, he reminds one of a quiet industrious person who performs unremittingly small tasks that amount to a large total.

He is a searcher for insect-eggs, and for insects so small that they might escape the notice of eyes not peculiarly fitted to espy them. His long bill is slender enough to slip into crevices which neither nuthatches nor woodpeckers investigate. Possibly it is because he selects such tiny particles of food that he must work so industriously in order to get enough to eat. He seems always in a hurry. Mr. Frank Chapman has humorously described the brown creeper as follows:

BROWN CREEPER