The Upside-Down Bird and the Creeper

Another winter, another brown creeper (Margo D. Beller)

I see here to-day one brown creeper busily inspecting the pitch pines. It begins at the base, and creeps rapidly upward by starts, adhering close to the bark and shifting a little from side to side often till near the top, then suddenly darts off downward to the base of another tree, where it repeats the same course. This has no black cockade, like the nuthatch.

-- Henry David Thoreau, Journal, Nov. 26, 1859

It is almost the same day 159 years later and the brown creeper I am watching is doing the exact same thing Thoreau saw in his woods, living up to its name by creeping deliberately up a stout tree.

I am in a small park in my town, carefully walking in the frozen slush, and I have stopped to watch some robins. Then I see movement against the brown-gray of the tree and there is the creeper, almost perfectly camouflaged, the movement of its head showing the white below and thus giving it away.

I stand and watch it a long time as it carefully climbs the tree, sticking its long, decurved bill into every crevice. It makes a faint sound that, because I only seem to find these birds in late autumn into winter, is not as familiar to me as that of the nearby white-breasted nuthatch, whose call sounds like hank. 

Creepers, according to the bird people at Cornell, build their nests behind peeling tree bark. Is this bird looking for food or a nest site? The range map shows this bird is a year-round resident of northern New Jersey. They mainly eat insects but will also come to suet feeders. I've never had one there.

That is not the case with the white-breasted nuthatch, which I see at my sunflower seed feeders every day they are out. This bird is not quiet, shy or easily missed like the creeper, it is a pugnacious little bird that stands out. It will fly to the house feeder, cling to the roof, dip its head down and grab a seed even as a larger bird such as a cardinal is sitting inside and eating. When a nuthatch flies in, the house finches scatter, as do most of the smaller birds.

I went to the oaks. Heard there a nuthatch's faint vibrating tut-tut, somewhat even like croaking of frogs, as it made its way up the oak bark and turned head down to peck. Anon it answered its mate with a gnah, gnah.
-- Thoreau, Journal, April 6, 1856

White-breasted nuthatch (Margo D. Beller)

Watching the creeper now, I see the nearby white-breasted nuthatch uses an entirely different technique. It does not start at the bottom and work its way up, it flies high and goes up the tree or turns its head around and goes down. For that reason it is called by some the "upside-down bird" because few birds will travel a tree with head down. Even the woodpeckers, climbing trees with their tails bracing them, will go backwards but will not go down head first.

The white-breasted nuthatch, despite having a whole tree at its disposal, now flies at the creeper to force it away so it can examine that spot. The creeper flies to the other side of the trunk, where I can no longer see it. Another nuthatch, on a nearby tree, calls and this one answers.

Unlike the creeper, the only one of its type, there are three types of eastern nuthatches, the white-breasted, the red-breasted and the brown-headed. (I have seen all three.) The brown-headed is found as far north as Delaware, although occasionally one hitches a ride on the Cape May-Lewes ferry and shows up to thrill birders in New Jersey. Its call is high-pitched and squeaky, more like a mouse than a bird.

The red-breasted is a bird of northern, piney woods but in some years, such as this one, it can't find enough food and so moves south. This phenomenon is called irruption, and we have them most winters although the birds flying south may vary. (One year it was snowy owls.)

Besides the red breast, this bird is easily identified by the black line that runs through the eye. Its call is another pitch entirely from the white-breasted nuthatch and usually faster. This year I saw several in the larches on the outskirts of a dog park near me for one bright morning, but it was only that one day.

If I am lucky, a red-breasted nuthatch will come to my feeder, too, but usually it is quickly chased off by the slightly larger white-breasted. That has been the case so far this season - a blink-and-you'll-miss-it visit by a red-breasted nuthatch that was just figuring out how to take a seed when it was chased off by the white-breasted. I hope it got a chance to come back and get a seed or two before heading for a pine forest.

White-breasted nuthatch about to force off a titmouse.
(Margo D. Beller)

Raking

Despite nearly 20 years in suburbia I still find the leaf blower to be at best a necessary evil and I try to use it as little as possible.

The first time I go out after the leaves start to drop I use the lawn mower to mulch them. The next time, after more leaves are down, I convert my electric leaf blower into a mulching vac and crunch up as many as I can stuff into the compost pile.

But after the pile gets filled I must use the blower to herd the leaves closer together to save some time and energy before I use my rake and tarp.

Unfortunately, I am in the minority. Most of my neighbors have lawn services that use leaf blowers, huge fans and tractors to shove the leaves into huge piles at the curb. The din is painfully loud and the gas smell pervasive. At least they finish quickly.

Those doing it themselves have their own blowers and fans that are just as bad and take longer to finish. My neighbors must work when they have free time and if that means going out as night is falling and working in the dark, so be it.

When I pull out the rake I am purposely slowing myself down. I can go out early and work quietly. I am not wasting energy but I am getting needed exercise. I can listen to the birds.

Also, I get time to think. Here are some things I have thought while raking:

1. I always know where my neighbor’s property ends and mine begins during leaf-blowing season because he will not go one inch further.

2. A pristine lawn won’t last more than a day before leaves come back on it, even if using a lawn service. So why fuss about it? “Let’s not finesse it,” my husband often tells me as we work.

3. Speaking of MH, raking is a nice way of bonding with your spouse. Every year MH and I start by getting in each other’s way but without saying anything we develop a pattern: he makes smaller piles, I sweep them into the tarp. Then we lug the tarp to the curb. The job goes faster and we rejoice in its completion together.

4. The birds aren’t happy when I work near the feeders but they are very happy when I clear the big leaves and uncover the bugs.

5. If you stop every so often you might find something interesting. One year it was a brown creeper heading up a tree. This year it has been a redtail hawk being harassed by crows and 15 black vultures circling over the house.

6. You can see how the lawn is doing up close, including where the mushrooms have come up, the ground ivy has taken over and the skunks have been digging for grubs.

7. Wind is the ultimate leaf blower. If I go out on a windy day I figure out the direction and rake accordingly. It amazes me how someone will try to fight the wind, wasting time and energy. Life is too short.

8. I would love to meet the person on the Shade Tree Commission who decided having locust trees on my street would be a great idea. Locust leaves are too small to be effectively blown or even raked, and the female trees usually have hundreds of hanging seed pods that fall and blacken the lawn. Luckily, this year was the one in three when the female tree on my property produced only a few pods. I would like to punch that commissioner in the nose.

9. Why don’t more towns require leaves be bagged? It’s hard enough driving on leaf-clogged streets, harder still to walk on streets without sidewalks where leaves on both sides make a two-way road into one lane. In the years I would walk home from the train every night I feared the oncoming car at my back that wouldn’t slow down. Luckily, I lived to tell the tale. When my town comes through the crew leaves almost as much behind as it picks up. I would think collecting ecologically approved brown bags of leaves would be more efficient and quicker.

10. You are going to see your neighbors and they are going to see you, whether you like it or not. So wave and be friendly. It might be the last time you see them until next fall.

What's in a Name?

The other morning I was standing in my front yard, thinking of all the things left to do in the garden before winter comes, when a little bird flew to one of the locust trees and started climbing up the tree, its long, curved bill probing the bark.

A brown creeper. It is a common bird in New Jersey but I usually see them at this autumnal time of year either while hiking or raking leaves.

The brown creeper is aptly named because it is brown and creeps up the tree. Unlike the nuthatch, which walks up and down trees, the creeper only goes up. When done in one tree it flies to the bottom of the next and starts creeping up again.

Watching the creeper at its business I started thinking of the names of other birds I see regularly.

The chickadee, for instance, named for its chick-a-dee-dee-dee call. Or the cardinal, in its red robes. Or the towhee, so named because that is what it calls out when alarmed.

The phoebe calls its name, a thin fib-BIT. But the tufted titmouse also has a call where it sounds like it is calling phee-BEE, and another call where it says a rough dee-dee-dee like a chickadee. I knew I was getting somewhere as a birder when I learned to tell the raucous call of the titmouse from the calmer call of the chickadee.

Then there’s the redbellied woodpecker. The first time one of these came to my friend’s feeder she told me she had seen a redheaded woodpecker. If you saw the redbellied woodpecker you’d notice the fine red that runs along the head and down the back of the neck, too. But there already is a redheaded woodpecker whose entire head is red and whose body is solid black and white. Since the redbellied has a bit of pink on its belly, that became its name.

Black-throated blue, black-throated green and yellow warblers are aptly named for their plumage but warblers generally don’t warble. Palm warblers don’t live in palms, prairie warblers don’t stay in the prairie and the Cape May, Tennessee, Nashville and Kentucky warblers are more likely to be seen in New Hampshire than the states where they were allegedly first seen.

The harlequin duck is one of my favorites, unique in its clownlike coloring. But how did the duck now known as the longtailed duck get its first name of "old squaw?"

There’s the bluebird and louder and larger jay, which is also blue and usually called a blue jay. According to Diana Wells’ “100 Birds and How They Got Their Names,” jay comes from the old French word “jai” and likely refers to the bird’s “gay” plumage.

The catbird has a mewing call that can sound like a cat while its cousin the mockingbird uses the calls of other birds as though to mock them. (One can listen to a mockingbird and get an idea of what other birds are in the neighborhood.)

All very interesting, albeit confusing. The sad part is, most of the time a birder could care less about the bird‘s name and how it got there as long as he or she can put a check next to it on a life list.

It took a brown creeper to remind me to not only look at the bird but think about it, too.