Rising late, I wonder what I’ve missed out on. The sun goes in. Two brown creepers scuttle around to the far side of the big tulip tree.
brown creeper
11/15/2019
Pulling my hat down against the sun, I glimpse a brown creeper on the dark side of a trunk. Every breeze strips more leaves from the lilac.
1/2/2019
One mound of November’s snow has survived into 2019. I’m watching a brown creeper but hearing a nuthatch—and all the voices of the stream.
11/4/2018
Yard seething with birds: sparrows, chickadees, a brown creeper. A raven flies past with something in its bill, wings going pfft pfft pfft.
4/12/2018
A brown creeper scuttles up an oak. A raven flies low over the house—its heavy wingbeats. The first brown thrasher appears in the lilac.
10/24/2016
Over the wind, the twittering of chickadees trailing a flock of kinglets into the birches. Two brown creepers appear on adjacent trunks.
11/7/2013
In the poor light, the quick movements of birds: those that chatter, those that flutter, those that scuttle like beetles, those that tap.
3/19/2013
In the new snow, the splayed-hand tracks of an opossum cross the porch. A brown creeper busies itself on a tree at the wood’s edge.
12/19/2012
A brown creeper ascends the trunk of a walnut tree, its jerky scuttling more insect-like than avian. Up on the ridge, a furious mob of crows.
11/4/2012
A titmouse hops from one limb-stump to another on the newly truncated cherry snag. Five minutes later, a brown creeper scoots up the bole.
12/21/2010
Solstice sunrise turns the western ridge red as an altar. A brown creeper fishes in all the dark valleys of the walnut tree’s bark.
10/31/2010
Below the porch, a dot of pink: a very late dame’s-rocket blooming the day after a hard frost. A brown creeper inspects a small walnut tree.
1/18/2010
The overcast sky looks the same, but the light turns from glow to dull in just 15 minutes. I watch a brown creeper but hear only nuthatches.