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Bird of the Month Brown Creepers are tiny brown songbirds with long, spine-tipped tails and curved bills. Brown Creepers search for small insects and spiders by climbing upward in a spiral around tree trunks and limbs using their stiff tails for support. Starting near the bottom of the trunk, they work their way up the tree to within several feet of the top, then fly to the bottom of another tree (or sometimes the same tree) to begin again. They glean, probe, and peck at the trunk with their long, down-curved bills. Brown Creepers sing a very high-pitched song that is sometimes too high to hear. Brown Creepers breed primarily in evergreen or mixed evergreen-deciduous forests up to treeline (around 11,000 feet). In the winter season, the species moves into a broader variety of forests as well as suburbs, parks and orchards. Brown Creepers are year round residents from southeast Alaska southward through the Mountain West and central Mexico to Nicaragua and eastward across southern Canada to New England and the Appalachian Mountains. In winter, part of the population migrates to lower elevations and across the entire central and southeastern U.S. The Brown Creeper sighted by Genie and Bill Cooper on Trail B on Nov. 17 probably spent the summer at high elevations around Mount San Gorgonio or Mount San Jacinto and has moved downslope to Four Seasons for the winter. ~ Steve Edelman Birding CLUB On Nov. 17, Genie and Bill Cooper sighted a Brown Creeper on Trail B; this is a new bird for Four Seasons, species #116 (and our Bird of the Month)! Winter birds continue to arrive, including a Hermit Thrush on Nov. 18 on Trail B and an American Pipit in the grassy retention basin next to The Courts on Nov. 27. We had a nice group for the morning bird walk on Dec. 4, during which we saw 22 species. Highlights included several flyover flocks of California Gulls and a flock of about 10 Dark-eyed Juncos and a White-breasted Nuthatch on Trail C. We had dozens of American Robins and Cedar Waxwings (both of which were almost absent from Four Seasons last winter), and nice looks at a coyote. Later in the day, Tina Canon, Genie and Bill Cooper, Tom Paulek, Barbara Wasco, and I saw 10 additional species for a total of 32 species for the day, the highest count since April! ~ Steve Edelman, steve.h.edelman@gmail.com FOUR SEASONS BREEZE | JANUARY 2022 39 Brown Creeper like the one seen by Genie and Bill Cooper on Trail B on Nov. 17. Photo by Rachel Ames, National Park Service Coyote on Trail A during our Dec. 4 bird walk. Photo by club member Kathryn McGiffen California Gulls flying over Trail B on Dec. 4. Photo by club member Linda Miller

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