These fluffy flecks of cinnamon brown spend their lives flying down and walking up tree stairs. Few birds are more "set" in their ways. In zigzag hitches they ascend a tree trunk spirally, pausing at intervals to seize a cluster of insect eggs or perhaps the parents themselves, vainly attempting to escape beneath bark crevices.
The hunting area is confined to the main stem and when diverging branches are reached they slant down like small flying squirrels, to another tree base, repeating the performance endlessly. Dame Nature has ordered their lives in this groove and they obey.
They are true "gleaners" with weak, slightly curved bills, and never dig for prey as the stronger Nuthatches and Woodpeckers do.
So perfectly does their coat merge with bark that few mortals have ever seen them at rest. I caught one asleep once. I was camping in the Maine woods late in the fall. Snow fell during the night and when I looked out from the lean-to shelter in the gray morning my eyes chanced on the bird clinging to a spruce ten feet beyond the campfire. Damp snow on the bark outlined its form. Otherwise, I think it would have escaped observation.
Eastern North America; north to about 50 Lat., west to eastern part of Great Plains. Breeds south to Massachusetts, northern Indiana, southeastern South Dakota and southeastern Missouri and along higher Alleghenies to mountains of North Carolina (above 4000 feet). Winters over a large part of its breeding range to northern Florida and central Texas.