Certhia
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 Brown Creeper | ||||||||||||
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Certhia is the genus of birds containing the typical treecreepers, which together with the Spotted Creeper make up the family Certhidae.
The typical treecreepers are all very similar in appearance, and can present serious identification problems where two species occur together. They do not normally migrate other than for local movements.
The treecreepers are small woodland birds, brown above and white below. They have thin pointed down-curved bills, which they use to extricate insects from bark. They have stiff tail feathers, like woodpeckers, which they use to support themselves on vertical trees.
Nests are in tree crevices or behind bark.
Species in taxonomic order
Following recent studies of cytochrome b mtDNA sequence and song structure (Tietze et al., 2006), the following species are recognized:
- Common Treecreeper or Eurasian Treecreeper, Certhia familiaris
- Hodgson's Treecreeper, Certhia hodgsoni
- Brown Creeper, Certhia americana
- Short-toed Treecreeper, Certhia brachydactyla
- Himalayan Treecreeper or Bar-tailed Treecreeper, Certhia himalayana
- Sichuan Treecreeper, Certhia tianquanensis
- Nepal Treecreeper or Rusty-flanked Treecreeper, Certhia nipalensis
- Sikkim Treecreeper or Brown-throated Treecreeper, Certhia discolor
- Manipur Treecreeper, Certhia (discolor) manipurensis
They form two evolutionary lineages: the former four species represent a Holarctic radiation, whereas the remaining five are distributed in the area south and east of the Himalaya. Hodgson's Treecreeper, recently realized to be a distinct species, is an offshoot of the Common Treecreeper's ancestor which has speciated south of the Himalaya. The former group has a more warbling song, always (except in C. familiaris from China) starting or ending with a shrill sreeh. The Himalayan group, in contrast, has a faster-paced trill without the sreeh sound.
References
- Tietze, Dieter Thomas; Martens, Jochen & Sun, Yue-Hua (2006): Molecular phylogeny of treecreepers (Certhia) detects hidden diversity. Ibis 148(3): 477-488 doi:doi:10.1111/j.1474-919X.2006.00547.x (HTML abstract)
External links
- Treecreeper videos on the Internet Bird Collection
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia; from the article "Certhia". Image Credit.
