TheBanyanTree: brown creeper

[Mike Pingleton]

thanks, Tom.  These are fun little birds to watch; I get them at my feeder
often.  I have a big walnut tree in the back yard and they work the bark
for bugs the year around.

-Mike



On Fri, Dec 6, 2013 at 5:19 PM, Tom Smith <trsmith44 at cox.net> wrote:

> Splendid poem, Mike, a delightful experience.  I particularly
> liked the ending, which seemed to relate directly to my own
> life.
>
> I wish this wonderful bird would get established in my neck
> of the woods.   Locally there has been a lot of devastation
> to trees by a pine bark beetle, and the Brown Creeper sounds
> like a perfect solution.
>
> These winged foragers are amazing climbers.  There is a
> fantastic shot of one at:
>
> http://www.flickr.com/photos/75027500@N08/6866666433/
>
>      brown creeper
>
> your thin, reedy whistle
> is so often drowned,
> but this dim early hour the town lies
> dreaming, the crows still sleeping.
>
> I hope to catch you in silhouette
> if I am to catch you at all,
> the trees black fractals against
> a wall of tarnished clouds.
>
> six-legged are summer?s children
> and summer has foundered in the
> sea of fallen leaves, but you know
> where hides the thrips and midges,
>
> the barley worm, the beetles in their
> bark crevices.  cloaked in the black
> you are ratcheting up the maple
> like a clock-work toy, a steeplejack
>
> on a hidden string.  hop then pause,
> tail propped, probing cracks and holes
> with your broom-straw beak, the
> source of your thin, reedy whistle.
>
> you weigh little more than moonlight;
> the ground?s faint pull makes the tree
> a mere rough road.  where the trunk
> tapers you flutter-fall to earth,
>
> lift your head and start upward anew.
> this is your own hard way
> and your bird heart hammers;
> it is said just one thin spider
>
> earns you muscle and gristle enough
> to master another ascent.
> I whistle for my dogs, we three have
> our own dark trees to transit.
>