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The woods were quiet and cold. A flutter, inconspicuous as a dead leaf, was moving upwards along the tree like a living thing. Moments later, when I saw it in profile, it was Brown Creeper. It’s the smallest bird in the Iowa winter.
Its surgically precise bill picked at the bark. The long tail balanced the bird’s body like a kickstand. I watched it spiral methodically up the tree.
Suddenly it fell like a leaf. It landed on another trunk, near the base of the tree. Then it started its spiraling ascent again.
On its back it wears the colors of tree bark. Except when seen in profile, it’s practically invisible.
How it survives frozen winters is a marvel, considering that it weighs a third of an ounce. This is not a bird that visits the bird feeder along with the winter parade of finches and sparrows. It fuels its tiny body with insects, spiders, ant eggs, and other minute life it finds hiding under loose bits of bark.
Sometimes even in winter I hear it singing, high pitched and fine as a crystal filament. (Click the green Listen button at All About Birds.)
Some people lose the ability to hear the brown creeper as their ears age. Many more simply never realize that this inconspicuous bird is in their own back yards.
In the purple areas, they breed, and some of them spend the whole year there. Others migrate for the winter to the blue areas. If you live in the purple or the blue, keep eyes and ears open. Brown Creepers are there.
Amazing photography! Such special birds—it always feels vaguely forbidden to notice them, like we aren’t supposed to. Great description of the song as “crystal filament”
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