Teach Me about Birds, Flash Cards in Full Color...revisited!

The little Brown Creeper was such a cool bird I thought it deserved a Teach Me about Birds, Flash Cards in Full Color check, and sure enough, one was in the box! Here is the Brown Creeper flash card from 1968 (my first field guide),


…and even more interesting, on the back of the flash card was the best description ever,

...a small, five-inch, mouse-like bird that climbs up trees in a spiral.

“Mouse-like bird” is such a perfect description. I don’t understand why it’s not in any of the contemporary guides. As I read further, I came across something else new,

Feeds on tiny destructive insects that it finds in the bark of trees. The bird’s pure-white breast may help to reflect light into the darker nooks.

Well that’s cool. None of the current guides talk about the breast reflection thing, so naturally, I started thinking about the white-breasted nuthatch and wondered if they used the same logic with that bird, and sure enough, they did. Here is the flash card,

…and here is the description,

A sturdy, little, 5 to 6 inch, grey tree-trunk acrobat (again a totally cute description). The white breast helps to reflect light into crevices in the bark it searches.

So there we go. Why is this little tidbit missing from today’s guides? Is it no longer valid, or just not deemed important. Whether it’s true or not now, it was in 1968, and that was a pretty good year!