Before continuing with more about owls, I'll note--with delight!--that there's been a Brown Creeper hanging around the yard for the past few days. He or she has been joining the woodpeckers and nuthatches at the suet feeders. They're such fun to watch as they start at the bottom of a tree and go spiraling upwards around the trunk--just the opposite of the nuthatches, who start at the top and work their way downwards.
Brown Creepers fall into that category of birds that are not especially rare, but that are uncommon enough that visits from them, or sightings of them in the field, are always welcome. I've not made any attempt to photograph our present visitor; the shots below were taken almost a year ago--February 1, 2010--in Madison, Wisconsin, on a tree outside the Memorial Union on the Univ. of Wisconsin campus.
These little guys sure have the protective coloring thing down pat!
I remember reading that the bottom-up versus top-down approaches of creepers and nuthatches is an example of natural selection working to allow two competing species to coexist without competition. Chickadees, nuthatches, and brown creepers often forage together in mixed flocks, or guilds, but by approaching the trees from different directions the creepers find bugs that the nuthatches miss and vice-versa. It's kind of like how many species of shoebirds are able to coexist on the same mudflats or beaches without competition due to the different lengths of their bills.
ReplyDeleteThanks for this, Brad. It's great to get feedback from someone who knows what they're talking about!
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