blend perfectly with the background upon which he rests. He has also a peculiar spiral motion when creeping, which renders it particularly uncertain at what point he will re appear. If, however, you chance to see him with a glass at short range, his markings will surprise you by their rich-ness; and his sharp, curving bill (very much like a surgeon's needle) completes his identification, as it is unlike the bill of other tree-trunk birds.
The protective plan of his colouring is earried out in his nest-building instinet, the nest being practically unfindable unless the bird is seen coming from, or going to it. Mr. William Brewster thus describes the location of a nest which he found near Lake Umbagog:<ref>Bulletin Nuttall Club, IV., 1879.. . . I shortly detected the sweet, wild song of the Brown Creeper, and, looking more carefully, spied a pair of these industrious little gleaners winding their way up the trunk of a neighbouring tree. . . . I instituted a careful search among the dead trees that stood around, and at length detected a scale of loose bark, within which was crammed a suspicious-looking mass of twigs and other rubbish. A vigorous rapping upon the base of the trunk producing no effect, I climbed to the spot and was about to tear off the bark, when the frightened Creeper darted out within a few inches of my face, and the next moment I looked in upon the eggs." He says of its song: "It consists of a bar of four notes, the first of moderate pitch, the second lower and less emphatic, the third rising again, and the fourth abruptly falling, but dying away in an indescribably plaintive cadence, like the soft sound of the wind among pine boughs. I can compare it to no other bird voice that I have ever heard."
FAMILY TROGLODYTID: WRENS, THRASHERS, ETC.
Mockingbird: Mimus polyglottos.
Plate 12
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