Exploring the Western NY Wilds: Brown creepers, the natural camo

 

When spring warms up the woodlands here in Western New York we are blessed by visits from an incredible number of songbirds of an equally incredible number of species.

Long before the colorful warblers make their way through here in May when the trees are leafing out and the warblers’ preferred meals of flying insects abound, our early spring woodlots, which seem drearily brown, are graced by a bird that many might consider equally dreary in appearance – the plain hued brown creeper.

But, as with all things in nature, at a closer glance, you will find that this diminutive feathered friend is, in his own way, just as beautiful as those warblers.

I for one find creepers to be utterly fascinating because their camouflage is bested by only a few in the entire bird kingdom (whippoorwills and ptarmigans immediately come to mind). It is a two-pronged camo, too – they can make themselves difficult to find by both sight and sound.

Creepers are hard to see

Brown creepers do just as their name implies – they creep. They will fly to the bottom of a tree, creep their way up quite a distance, fly away, and then creep up another trunk.

They do this in their tireless search for dinner. Whereas the aforementioned warblers flitter about in warm weather chasing down active flying insects, creepers crawl up trees looking for slow moving or stationary creepy-crawlies in every nook, cranny, and furrow of a tree.

Being a slow mover who likes to have their beaks and eyes to the wood, they could be considered fair game to predators like sharp-shinned hawks and weasels. But they aren’t – no one can see them.

Not only are creepers small (5” in length) and slender, they also blend in with their surroundings
perfectly.

While their bellies might be white, they are always pressed against a tree. It’s their backs that are exposed to the rest of the world. Those backs are an excellent streaked mix of browns, tans, and white that match the bark they are climbing. They can’t be seen from behind and you can only hope to catch a glimpse of them from the side, or while flying, to know they are there.

Creepers are hard to hear

Many birders who might not have seen creepers at first are notified of their presence by their unique call. It is a very high-pitched note that bird books say sounds like “tsee”.

But, at the same time, it is so high-pitched that many other birdwatchers can’t even hear it. Older folks or those who might have worked in a factory can’t hear it at all. It is beyond their range of hearing.

On top of that, the pitch is just right and sung into the tree trunk that the bird is virtually a ventriloquist. Even in a small woods it can be difficult to pinpoint where the sound is coming from.

Where to find creepers in WNY

Brown creepers are most abundant in the early spring when those that had made their way south for the winter are passing through en route to Canada. Even so, many live here all year.

 

They migrate through woods of any size, but creepers who stay prefer to live and breed in older, larger forests. Here in Allegany County you can find them nesting underneath the same bark upon which they feed (using an unusual hammock-like nest) in the higher elevations, especially closer to the Pennsylvania border.

Unlike some songbirds, the brown creeper’s population has been on an upward trend across the Empire State since 1965, likely due to farms going back to forests and those forests aging.

But, that doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll see them.

They aren’t rare; it’s just that they hide well, sporting some of the best camo out there. So, if you see one this spring, consider yourself lucky…and probably possessed of good eyesight or good hearing.

 

 

From the 18 March 2025 Wellsville Sun

Get involved in public comment periods

 

One of the most important tools afforded citizens when it comes to ironing out public policy is that of public comment.

 

Most folks tend to look at that rather dismissively, fully believing that their opinion, in the whole scheme of things, means nothing. 

 

Don’t ever think that way.

 

Public comment works. I’ve seen it firsthand quite a few times. 

 

The best example happened back in 2011 when this column looked at a proposal by the Obama Administration which would have excluded all minors (except the children of the farm’s owners) from most farm work and all animal husbandry. That would have killed the future of agriculture in this country and gutted 4-H and the FFA.

 

Thanks to the wonders of in the internet, the column went viral overnight and farmers, high school students, ag colleges, talk radio hosts, and politicians heartily voiced their opinions in the closing days of the public comment period. After that column made its rounds, public input increased a whopping tenfold to the US Department of Labor in a matter of just a few days. We beat back the regulations and it was a huge win for farming….all because people made their voices heard. 

 

It’s wonderful that our government gives us the chance to do that -- most don’t. Luckily we had founding fathers like Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson who were adamant about citizen-driven discussions, something that caught on in New England town halls and similar movements that followed and continue to this day.  

 

The process in a nutshell: When an executive branch or a legislative body, be it at the federal or local level, is looking at creating policy or has proposed a change in policy it opens up a public comment period during which a board, special committee or the agency charged with creating or enforcing the new policies accepts either oral opinions (at special meetings) or written comment (via email, websites, or postal mail) regarding the proposals. After the period closes, that group goes back to the drawing board and either alters or, as was the case with the farm rules, scraps it entirely.

 

When delivering your comment there are five basic rules you should follow.

 

Be educated. Take the time to download the new rules and regulations and read through them. Also, read up on why they were created. Don’t take the word of radio/TV talking heads, your favorite elected official or columnists like me. Sure, we can lead you to an awareness or an understanding of government action, but you need to take ownership of your knowledge of the issues.

 

Be educational. Most policymakers have not been in the line of work, science, or art that they might be looking to change. But maybe you have. Explain how the new rules will affect any number of things -- your workplace, your family, your community, the environment and the economy. Your real world perspective, from being in the trenches, is what they want to hear. Only you, being in the shadow of the dominos, can give the most realistic story of what could happen.  

 

Be professional. Although a proposed regulation might get your goat, maintain a poker face. Anger and resentment never win over people you are trying to influence. You have to be able to sell policymakers on your ideas – so be a good salesman…be respectful and positive, never demeaning.

 

Be to the point. Some public comment periods can be overwhelming to governmental agencies. With the aforementioned farm rules, the US DOL received 13,000 written comments, with nearly 12,000 of those coming in the final four days of the period. That’s 13,000 letters and emails they have to sift through and read individually. Don’t put them to sleep. Keep it short, just a few paragraphs or nothing longer than a newspaper column. 

 

Be yourself. Far too often, organizations you belong to will tell you to send a letter that they’ve written to an elected official, department, or public comment. Never, ever do that. If the individuals overseeing the task see a few hundred of the same canned letter it ends up making said letter meaningless, even when received in volume. You could call it “activist spam”. Decision makers want fresh ideas, fresh voices, and fresh perspectives. They want you.  

 

Contributing your comment seems like it could be a daunting task, but it’s not. The daunting task comes when you have to live with a series of laws or regulations you didn’t want in the first place. So, do everything you can to stop them from ever happening. We’re granted special powers as part of this republic. Use them.  

 

 

From the 15 March 2025 Greater Niagara Newspapers and Wellsville Sun

Remembering the Forgotten War, 75 years later

 

This year will mark the 75^th anniversary of the start of the Korean War.

 

Given society’s increasing disinterest in history, will it be remembered? Will its participants be remembered properly?

 

The chances aren’t good. A cursory look through online event calendars for various WNY communities doesn’t find any special ceremonies around June 25^th (when the war started) or July 1^st (when the US entered the war).

 

That, sadly, is par for the course. For many years, this conflict has been known as “the Forgotten War” because, collectively, we as a nation have ignored it, its meaning, and its sacrifices, likely because it was bookended by an epic World War and the controversies of the Vietnam War.

 

It’s rare that we discuss it and it’s rarer yet that we give the participants their just recognition and appreciation. Consider this: Almost everyone can readily identify the center point of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington DC -- the restrained yet powerful Vietnam Wall -- but how many can identify the primary image of the Korean War Memorial?

 

For those who don’t know, the memorial, finally built in 1995, is a collection of 19 statues of American soldiers trudging across rough terrain, harried looks on their faces anticipating the next surprise attack.

That haunting memorial perfectly represents the Korean experience. It was a frightening war, full of dreadful fighting reminiscent of World War I’s close-quarters bloodbaths and stressful horrors of scaling a steep hill, wondering if the barrel of an enemy’s gun would be at one’s head at the next rise. Our soldiers paid a heavy price in life and limb and those who survived saw things on a daily basis that no one should ever see, memories they carry with them to this day.

 

It started off horribly as more than 1,000 inexperienced and under-equipped young soldiers were cut down in one of the first American battles of the war, U.S. and U.N. forces greatly underestimating the power of the North Koreans. The body count remained high throughout the three-year occupation when battles in extremely rugged and dangerous mountain terrain became the norm. The war was so violent that come 1953 — after both sides each lost more than 1 million soldiers — it ended with an armistice, a cease-fire that left a ravaged land and its two primary nations in no better shape than before the war.

 

It was a brutal affair, but so few know that. Ask anyone to list in order the three U.S. military involvements of the past 100 years that had the highest number of casualties. Most respondents will answer incorrectly. They will answer in a hurry, and correctly, with number one (World War II) and number two (the Vietnam conflict). After some stumbling over a response for the third slot, most everyone will come back with our country’s most recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, responsible for more than 7,000 deaths.

That is the wrong answer. As horrific and heartbreaking as that death toll is, it is dwarfed by that of the Korean War. The bloody conflict accounted for the deaths of more than 34,000 Americans and the wounding of 103,000 more from 1950 to 1953.

 

It’s been a travesty that most Americans are uninformed in regard to something so great in scale of sacrifice. It seems that their only knowledge of the War is MASH, the classic television series and, even then, many people see that only as a piece of pop culture rather than storytelling built around the harsh realities of war. 

 

We need to use the 75^th anniversary as a means to finally celebrate the real-life heroes who inspired that show, especially since time is of the essence. Less than 11% of those who survived their service in the War are still alive today. They are in their twilight years and they won’t be with us much longer. The youngest of the Korean War veterans turns 90 this year -- the youngest!

 

This year, we need to give them the respect that is long past due, perhaps a ceremony and especially a heartfelt “thank you.” The Korean War veterans haven’t been told those two simple, yet powerful, words enough in their lifetimes. Let them know they weren’t forgotten.

 

 

From the 08 March 2025 Greater Niagara Newspapers and Wellsville Sun