Close to the bark

  

I returned home from the farmers' market to hear a Brown Creeper calling in our front yard.  Luckily my camera wasn't too far away, and the creeper spent some time feeding in a few different trees.  

Here it is searching crevices in the bark:

 

 

The creeper appeared to be successful locating prey, but the prey was too small for me to see while watching.  However, zooming in on photos later revealed a couple of prey items.

 

A small insect larva at the tip of the bill:

 

 

 

 

And possibly a small spider?

 

 

 

 

Turned out there were two creepers, both feeding along different tree trunks.

 

I love how well Brown Creepers blend in with the landscape of the trees—  the bark and lichens and mosses:

 

 

 

I'm also grateful for such wonderful visitors to our yard!

Barking up the right tree?

  

Brown Creeper (Certhia americana) looking for insects while working its way up a tree in our yard in Cotati, 25 September 2021

Among the oaks

  

A couple of quick shots from Crane Creek in the late afternoon today (4 February 2021).  Nuttall's Woodpecker (Dryobates nuttallii), above, and Brown Creeper (Certhia americana), below.

The gladdest thing

  

I suppose everyone has species that they're drawn to for some reason and Brown Creepers (Certhia americana) are in that group for me.  There's just something about how subtly beautiful they are.  I've posted about creepers several times over the years, but yesterday I had a close encounter with one, so here are a few of my favorite images.  [You can click on the images for larger versions.]

Looking like bark:

 

 

 

Going with the flow:

 

 

 

 

Searching for prey:

 

 

 

 

Feather details:

 

 

 

 

In profile view:

 

 

 

 Seeing creepers always makes my heart feel like the gladdest thing.
 

 

P.S.  The last line includes a nod to Edna St. Vincent Millay.

 

P.P.S.  For more information about Brown Creepers you can review the post from 24 March 2012.

Looking up

 

Brown Creeper (Certhia americana) during one of our neighborhood walks.

 

Among the bark and lichens

 

Brown Creeper (Certhia americana) foraging among lichens in Sharon, Massachusetts, on 23 December 2018.

Neighbors

After chores today, I went for a short walk around Cotati.  It was nice visiting with some of our neighbors (see below):

 

Western Tiger Swallowtails (Papilio rufutus) — perhaps a male following a female?

 

An accipiter (Cooper's Hawk?) calling and landing in a tall pine.

 

A Brown Creeper (Certhia americana) bringing food into a nest!  (The nest is underneath the peeling eucalyptus bark.)

Pausing to preen

I went for a short walk in the neighborhood before dinner.  It was relatively quiet, and then I heard one of my favorite birds calling, a Brown Creeper (Certhia americana).  

I listened carefully, and tried to follow the sound.  Brown Creepers are usually pretty active, searching for food along tree trunks and branches.  Watching for their movement is a good way to find them. Because they call while foraging, the sound usually moves around with them, but this time the call note kept coming from the same location.  Eventually I spotted the bird that was calling:

 

Instead of feeding, this creeper was actively preening.  It caught me a little off-guard — I couldn't immediately recall seeing a creeper preening before. 

Later I read in the Birds of North America that preening in Brown Creepers has not been described in detail.  It was hard to photograph, as the bird was perched in a shadowy place, but here's one image for the record:

 

I watched this Brown Creeper preen for ~4 minutes.  Then it started to search for food along the trunk.  It continued to give call notes, apparently keeping in touch with another creeper nearby.

I started wondering about why it might be difficult to observe creepers preening.  I'm guessing it's not because they don't preen that often.  Do they preen in more out-of-the-way places?  Or at times of day when we're less likely to see it?  Are they usually still and quiet when preening, and therefore harder to spot while blending in with the bark? 

 

P.S.  Click here for some nice pictures of a creeper posted on 5 October 2012.

Fir and feathers

 

I've missed these guys.  Since we moved to Cotati, I haven't seen too many Brown Creepers (Certhia americana).  I was glad to find two of them working their way up the trunks of a couple of fir trees in the neighborhood on 24 October 2015.

Creeping up 4th Street

On 27 December 2014, we were running an errand on 4th Street in downtown Santa Rosa.  I heard a familiar bird sound, but based on where we were (a city street) and the type of bird I thought it was (a woodland species), I wondered if I had identified the sound correctly.

I looked around to find the source and sure enough, there it was, among the holiday lights on a tree along the sidewalk:

 

I ran back to the car to get my camera and then walked over to take a few pictures: 

 

It brightened my day to see a Brown Creeper in such an unexpected location.  There were a few redwoods nearby, so perhaps creepers show up here occasionally.  I don't spend enough time on 4th Street to know, but if you've seen creepers there, I'd love to hear about your observations.

Here's one more of the creeper probing deeply into the bark of the tree:

 

We debated about a title for this post.  An alternative was "Street Creeper" — which we liked because it reminded us of "street sweeper," but I worried that it sounded, well, creepy.  Perhaps you can come up with an interesting title of your own?  

And no matter which title you prefer, I hope you can appreciate the wonder of seeing a Brown Creeper at eye-level working its way up the holiday-decorated trees on a busy city street!

Eating breakfast

A long day at work today, but while I was eating breakfast this morning I noticed this bird outside my window:

 

I'm always excited to see Brown Creepers (Certhia americana).  I don't think I'll ever get tired of watching them.

Here's another view when the creeper was crouched low against the redwood bark, searching for invertebrate prey.  (It was eating breakfast, too!)

 

To see a few more pictures and to learn more about creepers, review the post from last fall.

 

Foraging in furrows

 

Last weekend we were treated to close views of a Brown Creeper (Certhia americana) foraging on cypress trees near the entrance to the Bodega Marine Laboratory housing area.  Although it may be hard to tell from the pictures, creepers are very small, ~12 cm (4.5-5 inches) long.

Creepers prefer deeply furrowed bark.  The furrows provide shelter for their prey (e.g., insects and spiders).  Some of the trees at this site are more than 50 years old.  [Interestingly, several trees are visible and identifiable in Alfred Hitchcock's movie, The Birds, filmed in the early 1960s.]

 

Note the long curved bill for reaching into bark crevices.  (Creepers on the West Coast have longer bills than creepers on the East Coast.)  And look for the tail being used as a prop against the trunk.

 

 

When viewed up close, the back feathers are quite delicate and beautiful.  In the image below you can also see the cinnamon coloration at the base of the tail.

 

The hindclaw is extremely long for grasping bark.

 

Brown Creepers are uncommon migrants and winter residents on Bodega Head, but keep your eyes open for these delightful songbirds.

(For a couple of photos from Sebastopol and more information about Brown Creepers, see the post from 24 March 2012.)

 

Going up and coming down

While working at home in Sebastopol today, one of my favorite birds appeared outside the window.  Although steady rain was falling, I ran outside to see if I could capture an image.  Can you find the bird on the redwood trunk?

This is a Brown Creeper (Certhia americana).  The quote at the beginning of the Birds of North America account is a perfect description:

“The brown creeper, as he hitches along the bole of a tree, looks like a fragment of detached bark that is defying the law of gravitation by moving upward over the trunk, and as he flies off to another tree he resembles a little dry leaf blown about by the wind.” Tyler (1948)

Brown Creepers are small (12–13 cm long) tree-climbing passerines.  They're the only representative of the treecreeper family in North America.  Their coloration is cryptic, brown above with white/buffy spots and streaks and generally white below.  

Note the long, thin decurved bill (for gleaning insects and spiders from furrows in the bark), distinct supercilium (eyebrow stripe), long tail (used as a prop against the trunk), and long curved claws (for grasping pieces of bark).

Creepers forage in a predictable pattern, starting at the base of a tree, climbing up to near the top, then dropping down to the base of a different (or the same) tree to start again. 

Their high-pitched calls and songs are distinctive once you are familiar with them — a sibilant tsee note or a longer song tsee-tuti-sedu-wee .  You can listen to them here.

Amazingly, creepers build hammock-like nests between the trunk and a loose piece of bark.

Almost everything about Brown Creepers is an adaptation for living closely with large, old trees.