Birdpass
English
Eurasian Treecreeper

Eurasian Treecreeper

Certhia familiaris

Identify the Eurasian Treecreeper by sound or photo and log your sightings with Birdpass.

  • Download on the App Store
  • Get it on Google Play

The Eurasian Treecreeper is a tiny, brown-and-white woodland bird with a slender, downcurved bill and stiff tail feathers that brace it as it creeps up tree trunks. Widespread from western Europe to Japan, it lives in mature woods and parks, especially conifers where it overlaps with the Short-toed Treecreeper; the two are best told apart by their songs. Most birds are resident, though some northern birds move south-west in autumn.

Did you know?

  • Where available, it readily nests behind the soft, shaggy bark of planted giant sequoias.
  • Wood ants compete for the same prey, so treecreepers are scarcer in forests with many ant mounds.

Voice

Song
Call

About the species

Identification

A small, brown-mottled bird with pale underparts. It has a long, downcurved bill, slim body and stiff tail, which it uses as a prop while climbing up tree trunks. It often moves up the trunk in a spiral and flies to the foot of another tree with a short, quick flight. Compared with the Short-toed Treecreeper it has whiter underparts, a whiter eyebrow and warmer, more spotted upperparts.

Family

Certhiidae

Size

Tiny (goldcrest)

Colours

brown, white, grey

About the habitat

Mature coniferous and mixed forest and old broadleaf woodland, as well as parks, especially with old trees, loose bark and deadwood.

Diet

Mainly spiders, insects and other small invertebrates picked from bark crevices; in winter also some seeds and occasionally fat at feeders.

Behaviour

Forages by spiralling mouse-like up trunks and larger branches, bracing with its stiff tail, then flutters down to the base of the next tree. Generally solitary but joins mixed tit flocks in winter, and in severe cold several birds may roost huddled together. It nests behind loose bark or in tree cracks, laying five or six eggs.

Sources

Photo: Ekytza, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Обыкновенная пищуха (Certhia familiaris).jpg

Sound: Benjamin Mayer, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Certhia_familiaris_-_Eurasian_Treecreeper_XC528366.mp3

Sound: Jochem Verweij, XC910698, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://xeno-canto.org/910698

Text: Wikipedia (English) + FinBIF species descriptions + Wikipedia (Finnish) + GBIF regional observations + Wikipedia (Swedish), CC BY-SA 4.0; FinBIF: CC BY 4.0; Wikipedia: CC BY-SA 4.0; GBIF occurrence data; Wikipedia: CC BY-SA 4.0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurasian_treecreeper

See also