The brown creeper - allusive and hard to photograph

I rotated this counter-clockwise 90 degrees - they climb up a trunk vertically.

The brown creeper is a small bird on par with chickadees and nuthatches.  It is similar to them as it often frequents conifers and takes any morsel it finds.  It is also seldom stationary, moving quickly from spot to spot.  The difference, apart from appearance, is that it climbs up the trunk vertically while it forages for food.

The three species (creeper, chickadee, and nuthatch) cover the trees completely in their quest.  Nuthatches work from the top downward, chickadees are adept at scrounging through branches, and the creepers go upwards looking for anything the nuthatches may have missed.

Admittedly, I have not seen many brown creepers, certainly not in comparison to chickadees and nuthatches, and my photographs of them have never been very good.  The reason for this is threefold.  A low frequency in sightings, the quick and darting movements, and the fact that they always seem to be in the deep shade of a tree.  This often means having my camera's ISO set to something very high with a less than perfect shutter speed.  

You can see the photos I have managed to capture below - I have come across them 4 times when I had my long lens and camera with me.  I did not include one shot as it was not representative of the species.  You can see that, without flash, it has been hard to get a decent shot.  The most recent photo is the best I have ever taken of the bird.

Brown creeper photos I have taken over the last 25 years.

Thanks for reading.

Eric Svendsen     www.ericspix.com

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