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.
End of Chapter