A Creeper Foraging Head Downward
A Creeper Foraging Head Downward
Insofar as I can learn, creepers almost invariably fly, rather than creep, when essaying a descent, no matter how short the distance. Hence I was hardlv able to believe my eyes when, at Cedar Breaks, Utah, on October 16, 1934, I noted a Rocky Mountain Creeper (Certhia famtiliaris montana) that was acting very much like a chickadee. It was first sighted high among the sniall limbs of a tall Engelmann Spruce where it fluttered about and hung upside down so convincingly that I had passed it by for “just another chickadee” when a thin high note caused me to stop for closer study with the binoculars.
The antics of this creeper were amazing. It would crawl up the trunk and out on the underside of a drooping limb to the very tip, where the limb bent almost directly downward. There it would teeter a moment, fly either down or up to another limb tip, and creep up toward the trunk. Sometimes it would reach the trunk and start down the next limb, but more often it would flutter to another limb below or above, and creep a short distance with no apparent regard for the direction it took. Often it would creep down a limb, then turn around and creep up, but it never traveled far without fluttering to a new limb. The upside down creeping was always on the lower side of the limbs, and was always started from the trunk or from a short flight to a limb; it was never started by reversing directions when creeping upward.
C. C. Presnall
Zion National Park, Utah, November 6, 1934
