Brown Creeper
Certhia americana
Summary 4
The brown creeper (Certhia americana), also known as the American treecreeper, is a small songbird, the only North American member of the treecreeper family Certhiidae.
Description 5
Adults are brown on the upper parts 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 stiff tail used for support as the bird creeps upwards. The male creeper has a slightly larger bill than the female. Relatively, brown creepers are smaller than white-breasted nuthatches but larger than golden-crowned kinglets.
Measurements:
Its voice includes single very high pitched, short, often insistent, piercing calls; see, or swee. The song often has a cadence like; pee pee willow wee or see tidle swee, with notes similar to the calls.
Behavior 5
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.
Distribution, habitat and range 5
Their breeding habitat is mature forests, especially conifers, in Canada, Alaska and the northeastern and western United States. They are permanent residents through much of their range; many northern birds migrate farther south to the United States. Brown creeper has occurred as a vagrant to Bermuda and Central America's mountains in Guatemala, Honduras and the northern cordillera of El Salvador. As a migratory species with a northern range, this species is a conceivable vagrant to western Europe. However, it is intermediate in its characteristics between common treecreeper and short-toed treecreeper, 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). 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 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.
Conservation status 5
As with many of Washington's birds, the Cascades divide 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.
In Wyoming, C. americana has been recognized as preferring habitat within large, intact and mature stands of spruces, firs, or lodgepole pine. It is therefore potentially vulnerable to logging, climate change, or replacement of those tree species by Ponderosa pine. However, it is not considered a species of serious concern in that state.
Sources and Credits
- (c) Alan Vernon, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC-SA), https://www.flickr.com/photos/alanvernon/6147768284/
- (c) Steven Mlodinow, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC), uploaded by Steven Mlodinow
- (c) Sequoia Janirella Wrens, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC), uploaded by Sequoia Janirella Wrens
- Adapted by Desmon M Dunn from a work by (c) Wikipedia, some rights reserved (CC BY-SA), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Certhia_americana
- (c) Wikipedia, some rights reserved (CC BY-SA), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_creeper
