I sure love Brown Creepers! I love the musical, super-high, piccolo-like calls that help alert you to their presence. Without that call they’d be extremely easy to overlook. They are small and cryptically colored, blending right in with the tree bark where they like to forage. One behavior that can make finding them easier is that they tend to land on trees at the bottom and work their way up the bark looking for insects to eat. After they stop finding food, they’ll fly down to a new tree. They act a lot like nuthatches, except they move in the opposite direction.
Brown Creepers like nesting under the loose bark of a tree. I’ve had good luck finding nesting sites. In recent years many of those I’ve found have been on ash trees killed by Emerald Ash Borers. At least there was a tiny benefit to that disaster. All that loose bark makes good nesting habitat. I look for loose grass hanging down from cracks in the tree bark. The creepers carry the material up into the cracks, which are surprisingly small. I have no idea how they keep the young from slipping out, but somehow it works!
Generally, I’m not one to use white backgrounds, but I thought having this painting fade in and out of the page would work well, allowing viewers to focus on the cryptically colored bird. I also chose to play up the green of the bark for the same reason, helping the bird “pop” a bit more.
Please contact me if you’re interested in buying the original or a print of this painting. Some of my work is also available for licensing.
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