I would make a chart of our life,
know why just this circle of creatures completes the world.
Henry Thoreau, April 18, 1852
I hear first to-day
the seezer seezer of the
black and white creeper.
The seezer seezer seezer
of the black and white creeper,
suggesting still warmer weather,
—that the season has revolved so much further.
The Black-and-white Creeper . . . has a few notes, consisting of a series of rapidly enunciated tweets, the last greatly prolonged. It climbs and creeps along the trunks, the branches, and even the twigs of the trees, without intermission, and so seldom perches, that I do not remember ever having seen it in such a position. ~ J. J. Audubon
April 27. I hear the black and white creeper's note, — seeser seeser seeser se . . . Hear a faint sort of oven-bird's note. April 27, 1854
April 27. The black and white creepers running over the trunks or main limbs of red maples and uttering their fainter oven-bird—like notes. April 27, 1855
April 28. I hear to-day frequently the seezer seezer seezer of the black and white creeper, or what I have referred to that, from J. P. Brown’s wood bounding on Dugan. It is not a note, nor a bird, to attract attention; only suggesting still warmer weather, —that the season has revolved so much further. April 28, 1856
April 29. See and hear a black and white creeper. April 29, 1859
May 1. I hear a black and white creeper at the Cliffs, and a chewink. May 1, 1853
May 3. That oven-birdish note which I heard here on May 1st I now find to have been uttered by the black and white warbler or creeper. He has a habit of looking under the branches. May 3, 1852
May 3. Probably I heard the black and white creeper April 25th. I hear it and see it well to-day. May 3, 1858
May 4. The black and white creeper is hopping along the oak boughs, head downward, pausing from time to time to utter its note like a fine, delicate saw-sharpening; and ever and anon rises clear over all the smooth, rich melody of the wood thrush. May 4, 1853
May 4. I hear the weese wese wese of the creeper continually from the swamp. It is the prevailing note there. May 4, 1858
May 6. A creeper (black and white) yesterday. May 6, 1860
May 7. I hear the evergreen-forest note close by; and hear and see many myrtle-birds, at the same time that I hear what I have called the black and white creeper’s note. Have I ever confounded them? May 7, 1856
May 9. Black and white creeper's fine note. May 9, 1857
May 11. The black and white creeper also is descending the oaks, etc., and uttering from time to time his seeser seeser seeser. What a rich, strong striped blue-black (?) and white bird, much like the myrtle-bird at a little distance, when the yellow of the latter is not seen. May 11, 1856
May 12. Watch a black and white creeper from Bittern Cliff, a very neat and active bird, exploring the limbs on all sides and looking three or four ways almost at once for insects. Now and then it raises its head a little, opens its bill, and, without closing it, utters its faint seeser seeser seeser. May 12, 1855
May 12. We sit about half an hour, and it is surprising what various distinct sounds we hear there deep in the wood, as if the aisles of the wood were so many ear trumpets,-- the cawing of crows, the peeping of hylas in the swamp and perhaps the croaking of a tree-toad, the oven-bird, the yorrick of Wilson’s thrush, a distant stake-driver, the night-warbler and black and white creeper, the lowing of cows, the late supper horn, the voices of boys, the singing of girls, -- not all together but separately, distinctly, and musically, from where the partridge and the red-tailed hawk and the screech owl sit on their nests. May 12, 1855
May 13. The black and white creeper is musical nowadays. May 13, 1854
May 15. Watch a pine warbler on a pitch pine, slowly and faithfully searching it creeper-like. It encounters a black and white creeper on the same tree; they fly at each other, and the latter leaves, apparently driven off by the first. May 15, 1855
May 27. Hear a black and white creeper sing, ah vee vee, vee vee, vitchet vitchet vitchet vitchet. May 27, 1859
May 30. In the midst of the shower, though it was not raining very hard, a black and white creeper came and inspected the limbs of a tree before my rock, in his usual zigzag, prying way, head downward often, and when it thundered loudest, heeded it not. Birds appear to be but little incommoded by the rain. Yet they do not often sing in it. May 30, 1857
June 4. See a warbler much like the black and white creeper, but perched warbler-like on trees; streaked slate, white, and black, with a large white and black mark on wing, crown divided by a white line and then chestnut (?) or slate or dark, and then white above and below eye, breast and throat streaked downward with dark, rest beneath white. Can it be the common black and white creeper? Its note hardly reminds me of that. It is somewhat like pse pse pse pse, psa psa, weese weese weese, or longer. It did not occur to me that it was the same till I could not find any other like this in the book. June 4, 1855
June 15. At the Assabet Spring I must have been near a black and white creeper's nest. It kept up a constant chipping. June 15, 1854
August 18. See black and white creeper. August 18, 1856
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Black and White Creeper
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau
"A book, each page written in its own season,
out-of-doors, in its own locality."
~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2026
https://tinyurl.com/hdt-bandw
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