BARK BIRD

The Brown Creeper is a bark bird - a ghost of sorts, a spirit of our woodlands, a true druid flitting about in modern times. If you're an armchair birder that happens upon one for the first time you'd probably think you just discovered another continent. I recall my first, in my teens walking along a brook behind my house. I had took a double-take as the bird was going down-up the tree backwards. It would stop every once and a while and use its recurved pincer-beak to grab some imperceptible insect speck from under a flake of bark. It's hard to keep track. They climb up to a certain point - usually around the 40 foot level - and than fly down to the base of another tree and start the forage anew. A bark vacuum, gleaning and cleaning away insects from a trees skin like a remora fish on a shark.

I took the image below from deep within a cold, leafless, bottomland swamp in north central New Jersey this past weekend. If you're patient and observant most wooded habitats will host a few. The key is looking up and down trees - slowly - as you walk. Like I said, these guys are woodland spirits - eye-tricking apparitions in the woods all around us.

PS - Check out the tail-prop - common use of that tool

https://lnkd.in/eDX2MAx3