Common Birds 57 - Brown Creeper

January 19, 2024

Today is the sort of day I could live forever. I’m writing this in the evening. My son is asleep in the next room. My cat is standing on my chest, rubbing his face against my hands, suggesting, just suggesting, that petting him would be a far better use for my hands. I have some bread dough prepared for baking tomorrow morning. My wife is reading. We are content, happy, joyful.

On the trail I had no big thoughts or big encounters. I watched a red-bellied woodpecker scoot up a tree. Nearby, two nuthatches hopped down a tree. I saw my first brown creeper in the state of Massachusetts. They have a lot of similar traits to both nuthatches and woodpeckers. They creep up the sides of trees and are roughly nuthatch shaped, with white bellies and maple bark backs. They use their tails to support themselves like woodpeckers, and pry under bark with their beaks like nuthatches. When they sing, it’s unexpectedly beautiful, though today the creeper I saw was silent. 

I, too, was silent, standing in the snow, watching these myriad birds climbing up and down the trees, and it was very good.