And yet with all this painstaking workman's care, it
takes him just about fifty seconds to finish a tree. Then off he flits to the
base of another, to repeat the spiral process. Only rarely does he adopt the
woodpecker process of partly flitting, partly rocking his way with the help of
his tail straight up one side of the tree.
Yet this little bird is not altogether the soulless drudge he appears. In the
midst of his work, uncheered by summer sunshine, and clinging with numb toes
to the tree-trunk some bitter cold day, he still finds some tender emotion
within him to voice in a "wild, sweet song" that is positively enchanting at
such a time. But it is not often this song is heard south of his nesting
grounds.
The brown creeper's plumage is one of Nature's most successful feats of
mimicry -- an exact counterfeit in feathers of the brown-gray bark on which
the bird lives. And the protective coloring is carried out in the nest
carefully tucked under a piece of loosened bark in the very heart of the tree.
PINE SISKIN (Spinus pinus) Finch family
Called also: PINE FINCH; PINE LINNET
Length -- 4.75 to 5 inches. Over an inch smaller than the English
sparrow.
Male and Female -- Olive-brown and gray above, much streaked and
striped with very dark brown everywhere.
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