National Park Service Klamath Network Featured Creature U.S. Department of the Interior

Natural Resource Stewardship & Science Klamath Network Brown Creeper September 2016 Certhia americana

Field Notes crevices in the bark of trees. Beetles, raptors in the genus Accipiter ants, spiders, and pseudoscorpions equipped with short wings and long are common prey. Deeply furrowed tails for maneuvering in dense forest bark is a gold mine for these birds, conditions. Squirrels, deer mice, and which explains why they tend to other rodents will take eggs and young inhabit older forests containing large from the nest. trees that have had to time to develop thick bark. For nesting, they rely on Reproduction another feature of older forest: snags, Beginning in April or May, the female or standing dead trees. In the West, builds her nest behind a loose flap of they tend to occur in coniferous or bark against the trunk of a tree, mixed forests, but can also inhabit typically a snag. The base layer is orchards, woodlands, forested coarser twigs and bark held together floodplains, and swamps. by insect cocoons and spider-egg cases, forming a sort of “sling.” The Behavior and Life History nest cup is made of finer material such Brown creepers spend most of their as wood fibers, hair, feathers, grass, time in motion, foraging. Starting at lichens, and mosses. The female lays the base of a tree, they move upward, 4–8 white eggs, speckled with pink or Brown creeper. Photo: Tom Talbott, Creative Commons. often in a spiral, probing and picking reddish-brown spots at the large end. through the bark, with their legs Altricial (dependent) nestlings hatch General Description spread widely to either side and their from the eggs in approximately 15 If you see a piece of bark at the base of long, stiff tail propped against the days, and fledge 17 days later. a big tree suddenly start hopping trunk for balance. Once the branches upward in a spiral around the trunk, become too dense for efficient you’ve just spotted North America’s foraging, they fly back down to the only treecreeper: the brown creeper. base of another tree, typically This cryptic bird is not easy to spot, confining their foraging to the lower and no easier to hear, but actually 10 m of a tree. This spiral movement occurs widely from Alaska to Central around and up a tree can speed up America, and from coast to coast. and become a chase during courtship.

Identification Their thin, high-pitched vocalizations The brown creeper is a small are sometimes hard to hear. Calls songbird, 12–13 cm (4.5–5 in) long include a series of tsee notes, and their from the tip of its slender, short, melodic song is often repeated. downcurved bill to the tip of its tail. It Brown creeper at nest. Photo: Larry Jordan, weighs no more than two nickels Brown creepers are typically year- Creative Commons. (10 g). Its back is mottled with black, round residents, but northern and Where to See gray, and brown, sometimes with a high-elevation populations are known The brown creeper breeds in all of the reddish hue. It has a creamy white to migrate south or to lower elevations Klamath Network parks. eyebrow and mostly white underparts. during the winter. References and Further Reading Ecology Diet and Habitat Birds of North America online: Brown creepers eat invertebrates that Brown creepers fall prey to sharp- http://bna.birds.cornell.edu/bna/species/66 they glean with their slender bill out of shinned and Cooper’s hawks—forest 9 EXPERIENCE YOUR AMERICATM September 22, 2016