January 1, 2020 – The Brown Creeper is a tiny well camouflaged bird that seems to defy the forces of nature as it swiftly moves across the jagged edged bark of a tree. It pauses momentarily to search, with its’ long curved bill, the cracks and openings in and behind the tree bark for insects. The bird is an expert contortionist twisting its’ head to just the right angle to probe the difficult fissures to find its’ unsuspecting prey. The fast moving little Brown creeper, also searches the undersides of large limbs and is probably less often noticed by humans due to its’ size and dark colors than any other species of bird that spends as much time in the trees. The little bird blends in quite well to the tree bark of the large dark trees on which it hunts. The Brown creeper will land low on the trunk of a tree and work its’ way up and around the trunk eventually searching the higher branches for prey before moving to another tree. From my observations at multiple locations while watching the tiny creeper, within a short time of leaving one tree it will return back to the same tree repeating its’ search several times before moving on to continue its’ hunt on other trees. According to the Illinois Natural History Survey “the Brown creeper occurs in Illinois as a common migrant and winter resident and occasional summer resident. The Cache, Kankakee, Mississippi, Sangamon and Sugar Rivers appeared (1981) to be the center of distribution for nesting populations in Illinois.” Known as a short-distance migrant to resident we notice the wintering birds that have arrived in numbers from the north when we notice them hunting on the leafless trees in wooded areas and on the parameters of those timbered tracts of land.
