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Jan., 1908 27 THE TAWNY CREEPER IN WESTERN WASHINGTON By J. H. BOWLES A LTHO resident thruout the year, the Tawny Creeper (Cordia fitmiliaris oc- cidentalis) is locally distributed and must be considered as rather rare even in the most favored sections. Its retiring, unobtrusive habits and weak, kinglet-like squeaking note tend to m_?.ke it all the more elusive, even to the most experienced bird student. After the nesting season is over it may be found only in the most heavily-wooded districts remote from civiliza- tion. It is solitary in its hab- its and even during the winter months, when the nuthatches, kinglets and others of its near relations are traveling together in bands, the creep- ers are most often found alone, or else working over the trees with two or three more of their own kind. In hunting over a tree in the pursuit of the spiders, tiny beetles and other insects which make up its food sup- ply, the creeper invariably starts at the base, only a foot or two from the ground. It then works upward around the tree in spirals to a height of from twenty to forty feet, seldom higher, and then swoops suddenly down to the base of another tree, acting much as if it had accidentally lost its hold and fallen. A curious feature in its habits is that swampy land and the vicinity of water are the favorite haunts during the rainy winter months, NESTING SITE OF TIlE TAWNY CREEPER while during our dry summers it retires to the dryest woods it can find. This latter fact was unknown to me until the spring of 1905, and for years I had looked un- successfully for the nest in the low-lying, swampy districts such as the Brown Creeper (C. familiaris) frequents in eastern Massachusetts. The mystery was solved, however, on May 17, 1905, by Mr. W. Leon Daw- son, of Seattle, Wash., while we were putting in the day on the outskirts of Tacoma. He marked down a creeper gathering food, and we soon traced it to the nest which contained six well-grown young. The locality was very dry, on the