Hard-to-spot brown creeper lurks among tree trunks
You may have never seen a brown creeper in your backyard. But if you have a fair number of trees, it is likely one of these well-camouflaged birds has been creeping about without you knowing.
Brown creepers are found in mature woods. Because they blend so well with the coloration of trees and their tree-hugging movements up the trunk and along branches, this unique species can be difficult to spot. It is likely you’ve walked past many a creeper in your yard or on a hike.
At just over 5 inches long, this bird is most easily identified by its thin curved bill and its slow creep up a tree trunk while foraging for food. It often freezes if a threat appears. Because a person can be perceived as a threat, this makes it even harder to spot. Sometimes creepers will drop to the base of a tree and move in a spiral motion up the trunk, being careful to slowly cover as much territory as possible.
Creepers eat spiders, insects and other invertebrates, adding seeds and nuts during winter. They will come to bark butter (spreadable suet), especially when spread onto the trunk of a tree. They forage by moving slowly up the tree trunk and underside of branches using their tweezer-like bill to glean food from cracks and crevices in the bark of the tree. Although they love bark butter, I don’t hear of them coming to other feeders. They are solitary and hidden and do not seem to like a crowd.
David Sibley, in The Sibley Guide to Bird Life and Behavior, tells us that the brown creeper is the single North American representative of the family Certhiidae and is nearly identical to five other species of the genus Certhia, found in Europe and Asia. The greatest diversity occurs in the Himalayas.
Brown creepers are seasonally monogamous and are territorial during breeding season. It builds its nest against the trunk of a tree, usually hiding it under a limb or in a cavity. The brown creeper’s toes have long, curved claws which help it to better cling to the bark of trees.
Anne Schmauss is co-owner of the Wild Birds Unlimited store and loves to hear your bird stories. She is the author of For the Birds: A Month by Month Guide to Attracting Birds to Your Backyard. She has been writing the For the Birds column for more than 11 years.