Thanksgiving trifecta

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Brown creeper super-sized

Watching a brown creeper work its way up the trunk of an oak is always a treat for me; the bark huggers search every little crease and crevice for a crunchy insect or spider crudité. Creepers are only in my woods in the winter, choosing to raise their families elsewhere. 

They love the biggest trees they can find and don't waste much time on the spindly ones.
 

The other day, while I was sitting on my front porch, I spotted two creepers and a yellow-bellied sapsucker on the same oak.
 

My very own November trifecta, although I never would have bet on it.
 

Here's a "cool fact" from the Cornell Lab website: "Brown Creepers burn an estimated 4–10 calories (technically, kilocalories) per day, a tiny fraction of a human’s daily intake of about 2,000 kilocalories. By eating a single spider, a creeper gains enough energy to climb nearly 200 feet vertically."
 

Happy Thanksgiving! And we all have a lot to be thankful for and often it's the little things.

For more about creeperdom, click: Creeper.

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