For the similarly named Australian bird see Brown Treecreeper

Brown Treecreeper

The Brown Treecreeper is the largest Australasian treecreeper. The bird is endemic to eastern Australia, found in eucalypt forests and woodlands of the Great Dividing Range. The Brown Treecreeper is pale brown to grey-brown, with black streaking on the underparts and black bars on the undertail....

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For the similarly named New Zealand bird see Brown Creeper (New Zealand)

Brown Creeper (New Zealand)

The Brown Creeper , also known by its Māori name, Pipipi, is a small passerine bird endemic to the South Island of New Zealand. They are specialist insectivores, gleaning insects from branches and leaves...

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The Brown Creeper (Certhia americana), also known as the American Tree Creeper, is a small songbird

Songbird

A songbird is a bird belonging to the suborder Passeri of the perching birds . Another name that is sometimes seen as scientific or vernacular name is Oscines, from Latin oscen, "a songbird"...

, the only North America

North America

North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...

n member of the treecreeper

Treecreeper

The treecreepers are a family, Certhiidae, of small passerine birds, widespread in wooded regions of the Northern Hemisphere and sub-Saharan Africa. The family contains ten species in two genera, Certhia and Salpornis...

 family Certhiidae.

Description

Adults are brown on the upperparts with light spotting, resembling a piece of tree bark, with white underparts. They have a long thin bill with a slight downward curve and a long tail. The male creeper has a slightly larger bill than the female. The Brown creeper is 11.7-13.5 cm long (4.6-5.3 in).

Distribution and habitat

Their breeding habitat is mature forests, especially conifers, in Canada

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

, Alaska

Alaska

Alaska is the largest state in the United States by area. It is situated in the northwest extremity of the North American continent, with Canada to the east, the Arctic Ocean to the north, and the Pacific Ocean to the west and south, with Russia further west across the Bering Strait...

 and the northeastern and western United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

. They are permanent residents through much of their range; many northern birds migrate

Bird migration

Bird migration is the regular seasonal journey undertaken by many species of birds. Bird movements include those made in response to changes in food availability, habitat or weather. Sometimes, journeys are not termed "true migration" because they are irregular or in only one direction...

 farther south to the United States.

Conservation status

As with many of Washington's birds, the Cascades divided this species into two subspecies.
The species has declined in much of North America but appears to be doing well in Washington, with a small (not significant) increase on the state's breeding bird survey since 1966.

Behaviour

They forage on tree trunks and branches, typically spiraling upwards from the bottom of a tree trunk, and then flying down to the bottom of another tree. They creep slowly with their body flattened against the bark, probing with their beak for insects. They will rarely feed on the ground. They mainly eat small arthropods found in the bark, but sometimes they will eat seeds in winter.

Breeding

Breeding season typically begins in April. The female will make a partial cup nest either under a piece of bark partially detached from the tree, or in a tree cavity. It will lay 3-7 eggs, and incubation lasts approximately two weeks. Both of the parents help feed the chicks.

The song is a short series of high-pitched sees.

As a migratory species with a northern range, this species is a conceivable vagrant

Vagrancy (biology)

Vagrancy is a phenomenon in biology whereby individual animals appear well outside their normal range; individual animals which exhibit vagrancy are known as vagrants. The term accidental is sometimes also used...

 to western Europe. However, it is intermediate in its characteristics between Common Treecreeper

Common Treecreeper

The Eurasian Treecreeper or Common Treecreeper is a small passerine bird also known in the British Isles, where it is the only living member of its genus, simply as Treecreeper. It is similar to other treecreepers, and has a curved bill, patterned brown upperparts, whitish underparts, and long...

 and Short-toed Treecreeper

Short-toed Treecreeper

The Short-toed Treecreeper, Certhia brachydactyla, is a small passerine bird found in woodlands through much of the warmer regions of Europe and into north Africa. It has a generally more southerly distribution than the other European treecreeper species, the Common Treecreeper, with which it is...

, and has sometimes in the past been considered a subspecies of the former, although its closest relative seems to be the latter (Tietze et al., 2006).

Brown creepers prefer mature, moist, coniferous forests or mixed coniferous/ deciduous forests. They are found in drier forests as well, including Engelman spruce and larch forest in eastern Washington. They generally avoid the rainforest of the outer coast. While they generally nest in hardwoods, conifers are preferred for foraging.

Since the two European treecreepers are themselves among the most difficult species on that continent to distinguish from each other, a Brown Creeper would probably not even be suspected, other than on a treeless western island, and would be difficult to verify even then.

Brown Creeper has occurred as a vagrant to Bermuda

Bermuda

Bermuda is a British overseas territory in the North Atlantic Ocean. Located off the east coast of the United States, its nearest landmass is Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, about to the west-northwest. It is about south of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, and northeast of Miami, Florida...

 and Central America

Central America

Central America is the central geographic region of the Americas. It is the southernmost, isthmian portion of the North American continent, which connects with South America on the southeast. When considered part of the unified continental model, it is considered a subcontinent...

's mountains in Guatemala

Guatemala

Guatemala is a country in Central America bordered by Mexico to the north and west, the Pacific Ocean to the southwest, Belize to the northeast, the Caribbean to the east, and Honduras and El Salvador to the southeast...

, Honduras

Honduras

Honduras is a republic in Central America. It was previously known as Spanish Honduras to differentiate it from British Honduras, which became the modern-day state of Belize...

 and the northern cordillera of El Salvador

El Salvador

El Salvador or simply Salvador is the smallest and the most densely populated country in Central America. The country's capital city and largest city is San Salvador; Santa Ana and San Miguel are also important cultural and commercial centers in the country and in all of Central America...

.

External links

• Brown Creeper Information and Photos - South Dakota Birds and Birding
• Brown Creeper - Certhia americana - USGS Patuxent Bird Identification InfoCenter
• Brown Creeper Species Account - Cornell Lab of Ornithology
• Brown creeper species account - Animal diversity web
• Brown Creeper videos on the Internet Bird Collection
• Brown Creeper photo gallery VIREO