{"id":4081,"date":"2012-11-17T11:56:40","date_gmt":"2012-11-17T17:56:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/?p=4081"},"modified":"2012-11-17T11:59:14","modified_gmt":"2012-11-17T17:59:14","slug":"the-dawn-song-of-brown-creeper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/archives\/4081","title":{"rendered":"The Dawn Song of Brown Creeper"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Brown Creeper, Pueblo County, CO, November 2006. Photo courtesy of Bill Schmoker<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The dawn chorus. You love it or you hate it.<\/p>\n

If you hate it, it’s probably because you don’t appreciate being roused from sleep by a vigorous burst of birdsong in the early morning darkness.\u00a0 This is a common sentiment in the parts of the world where we now think of nature as an interruption of our experience, rather than the medium through which it flows.<\/p>\n

If you love the dawn chorus, it may be for its music, its regularity, its symbolism.\u00a0 Or just for the happy reminder that nature survives, at least in some form, right outside the window.<\/p>\n

I love the dawn chorus in part because it contains songs that you can hear at no other time of day.\u00a0 A number of North American birds sing dawn songs unlike anything they say after sunrise. I’ve written here about several: Violet-green Swallow<\/a>, American Robin<\/a>, Cassin’s Kingbird<\/a>, Cordilleran and Pacific-slope Flycatchers<\/a>.\u00a0 But if you had asked me six months ago whether Brown Creeper had a distinctive dawn song, I would have told you no.<\/p>\n

Here’s the typical song of the Brown Creeper — a short high-pitched warble, repeated without much variation:<\/p>\n

\n