BIRD OF THE MONTH: BROWN CREEPER

Brown Creepers are tiny woodland birds that love the biggest trees they can find. They have long tails, slim bodies and curved bills. They are streaked brown and buff with white underparts. They have a broad buffy stripe over each eye.
These little birds search for small insects and spiders by climbing upward in a spiral around tree trunks and limbs. They move with short, jerky motions using their tails for support. When ready to move to a new tree, they fly to the base and resume climbing upward.
Brown Creepers breed primarily in mature evergreen or mixed evergreen-deciduous forests. They can be found at many elevations, even as high as 11,000 feet. In the winter, they can be found in parks and suburban areas and may visit seed and suet feeders.
Brown Creepers build hammock-like nests behind loose flaps of bark still attached to a tree five to fifteen feet from the ground. Naturalists didn't know this until 1879.
The Brown Creeper's nest consists of a base made in part out of cocoons and spider egg cases anchored to the inner surface of tree bark with a cup made of fine pieces of bark, fibers, leaves, mosses and feathers.
The male collects the nesting material and the female builds the nest taking up to a month to construct it
The female will lay anywhere from four to nine eggs, usually five or six.
Both parents help feed the babies which fledge in thirteen to sixteen days.
Brown Creepers will often flock with kinglets, nuthatches and chickadees.
If in a treeless area, Brown Creepers will creep up any vertical object such as a fence post, a telephone pole, or even a brick wall.
To hide from predators, the beautifully camouflaged Brown Creeper spreads its wings and flattens almost invisibly against the tree trunk.
Besides insects, Brown Creepers eat spiders and spider eggs, some sunflower seeds, pine and grass seeds, acorns and corn, chopped peanuts, peanut butter and suet.
Brown Creepers burn an estimated 4 - 10 calories a day. By eating a single spider, a creeper gains enough energy to climb nearly 200 feet vertically.
The oldest Brown Creeper on record was at least 5 years, 5 months old.