Cryptic and quiet, the Brown Creeper is easily overlooked in woodlands across the continent. Look for these little, long-tailed scraps of brown and white spiraling up stout trunks and main branches.
Description[]
Brown Creepers are streaked brown and buff above, with their white underparts usually hidden against a tree trunk, Brown Creepers blend easily into bark. Their brownish heads show a broad, buffy stripe over the eye (supercilium).
Behavior[]
Their piercing calls can make it much easier to find this difficult-to-spot but common species. They move with short, jerky motions using their stiff tails for support. To move to a new tree, they fly weakly to its base and resume climbing up
Feeding[]
Brown Creepers search for small insects and spiders by hitching upward in a spiral around tree trunks and limbs. They probe into crevices and pick at loose bark with their slender, downcurved bills. In the breeding season, Brown Creepers eat insects and their larvae along with spiders, spider eggs, and pseudoscorpions. They mainly patrol large, live trees with deeply furrowed bark, which harbors the highest densities of insects. Brown Creepers may visit seed and suet feeders.
Breeding and Nesting[]
Creepers are probably monogamous, with partners staying together until several weeks after the chicks fledge. Both parents may feed the fledglings. Territories break down late in the breeding season, and in the winter creepers often roost communally and join flocks with other species to forage.
Brown Creepers build their hammock-shaped nests behind peeling flakes of bark. Both adults investigate several possible nest sites. They almost always choose a spot between the trunk and a loose piece of bark on a large, dead or dying tree—either deciduous or coniferous—in a dense tree stand. They occasionally nest in large live trees with peeling bark or in dead portions of live trees. Nests are between a couple of feet off the ground and 40 feet up. The female takes a week or two to build the nest, while the male helps by bringing nesting material (he often sings nearby). She builds the frame of the nest by layering twigs and strips of bark. She uses insect cocoons and spider egg cases to stick those materials to each other and to the inner surface of the tree bark. The nest cup, up to 2.5 inches deep and 6 inches across, consists of wood fibers, spider egg cases, hair, feathers, grass, pieces of leaves, lichens, and mosses. Some of the materials may be used twice, once to build the base and later taken from the base to build the nest cup. 5 to 6 eggs are laid, 1 brood is raised per year, incubation is by female and lasts around 13 to 17 days.
Distribution and Habitat[]
The Brown Creeper prefers forests with many large live trees for foraging and large loose-barked (often dead or dying) trees for nesting. In the summer it tends to live in mature coniferous forests; the tree species vary greatly across its range, but can include redwood, Douglas-fir, ponderosa pine, spruce, eastern hemlock, white pine, and bald cypress. In the winter it uses a wider variety of wooded habitats from deciduous forests to suburbs to parks to orchards. In winter in north Texas and the Midwest, creepers are particularly common in oak-hickory forests and tree savannas. Brown Creepers breed up to about 4,500 feet elevation in eastern North America and all the way up to treeline (around 11,000 feet) in parts of the West.