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Brown Treecreeper | Climacteris picumnus
Grijze kruiper | Corretroncos pardo
The Brown Treecreeper is the treecreeper of the dry eucalypt woodland of eastern Australia: an unobtrusive grey-brown bird that spirals its way up a trunk but spends quite as much time hopping among the fallen timber on the ground. It lives in small family parties in which older young help raise the next brood, and it nests only in tree hollows. Those two traits are what make it vulnerable: where the old wood goes, the bird goes, even though across its range as a whole it is still a common species.
Voice
A sharp, far-carrying spink, repeated in series, and in much dry woodland the most familiar sound of all. Members of a party keep in touch with a quick, rattling chatter, and when the birds are excited a trill rolls through the trees, taken up by one bird after another. The species is decidedly noisy: in open forest it gives itself away by voice long before it does by movement.
No freely licensed recording has been found for this species yet; what to listen for is described below.
Identification
A slim bird of sixteen to eighteen centimetres with a thin, slightly decurved bill, strong legs and long toes. The upperparts are plain grey-brown and the crown greyer; above the dark eye-stripe runs a faint buff brow that never stands out sharply. The underparts are pale buff, finely streaked black and white on the belly and flanks. In flight a broad buff wing-bar flashes out, the character shared by all the treecreepers of the genus Climacteris. Male and female differ on the upper breast: the streaking there is black in the male, rufous in the female. The bird works up trunk and branches in a spiral, then flies low to the base of the next tree and starts again; it also forages a great deal on the ground among fallen branches, where ants supply most of its food.
Confusion species
White-throated Treecreeper (Cormobates leucophaea) often shares the same trees in the east, but has a sharply defined white throat, no brow, and never comes to the ground; it also starts at the foot of a trunk and climbs to the canopy without a break. Red-browed Treecreeper (Climacteris erythrops) has a clear rufous brow and keeps to wetter, higher forest. White-browed Treecreeper (Climacteris affinis) is smaller, carries a crisp white brow and lives in the mulga and acacia scrub of the arid interior. Black-tailed Treecreeper (Climacteris melanurus) is larger and much darker, with a black tail, and replaces this species in the north; the two ranges meet in the Gulf country, and there the dark plumage is the decisive difference. Rufous Treecreeper (Climacteris rufus) has warm rufous underparts and occurs only in the south-west, so confusion does not arise in the field.
Habitat
Dry eucalypt forest and open woodland, with a preference for box and ironbark stands carrying dead standing trees and a deep layer of fallen timber. River red gum along creeks and floodplains suits it equally well, and it is there that the species reaches its highest densities. What the ground has to supply is threefold: hollows of the right size to nest in, rough bark to work insects out of, and an open floor with dead wood to forage on. Where stock have eaten out the ground layer and the dead wood has been cleared for firewood, only the middle one of the three is left, and the species does not persist.
Where the bird is most often found, arranged by main group and formation.
Range and movements
Eastern Australia, from Cape York Peninsula south through Queensland and New South Wales to Victoria and south-eastern South Australia, and inland far into the dry country. On Cape York and in northern Queensland a darker race with a blackish back replaces the southern birds. Tasmania has none. These are sedentary birds in the strict sense: a party holds the same territory year after year, and young males often stay on in their natal area as helpers. That reluctance to move is one reason the species drops out of small, isolated remnants and does not come back.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
Where and when to look
In open box-ironbark woodland look on the ground first and in the trees second; this is the one treecreeper you will regularly see hopping among fallen branches. The sharp spink carries for hundreds of metres and locates the party before you see it. To sex a bird, wait until it is clear on a trunk and check the colour of the breast streaking: black in the male, rufous in the female. Dead standing trees with hollows are the best anchor point, because the party returns to them to roost at dusk.
Conservation
Least Concern (LC) across the range as a whole, and over much of eastern Australia the bird remains numerous. The picture in the south-east is less good: in the fragmented farming country west of the Great Dividing Range it has gone from many remnants, and the south-eastern race is listed as vulnerable in New South Wales. The causes interlock: removal of dead wood for firewood, grazing that strips the ground layer, and the absence of young trees to supply the hollows of a century hence. Because the birds barely cross open ground, an emptied remnant does not refill on its own.
Scientific name
Climacteris picumnus | Temminck, 1824
Coenraad Jacob Temminck described the species in 1824, from material out of southern Queensland. The genus Climacteris is built on Ancient Greek klimax ('ladder'), hence something like 'ladder-climber', after the way these birds take a trunk. The epithet picumnus refers to Picumnus, a figure of Roman religion associated with the woodpecker and also the name of the piculet genus; the allusion is thus to the woodpecker-like manner of climbing. The English name Brown Treecreeper and the Spanish corretroncos pardo both take the brown colour, while the Dutch grijze kruiper names the greyer crown and back — a difference of emphasis, not of bird.