Treecreepers | Certhiidae

Boomkruipers | Agateadores

The upperparts are mottled brown, rust and white like a piece of bark; a bird pressed motionless against a trunk cannot be picked out at close range. The tail feathers are stiff and pointed and serve as a prop, the claws are long and curved, and the thin bill is strongly decurved for probing into crevices in the bark. Foraging follows a fixed pattern: start at the foot of a trunk, climb upward in a spiral into the lowest branches, then fly to the base of the next tree and begin again. The food consists almost entirely of small arthropods and their eggs, picked out of the bark. The nest is a crescent-shaped hammock of twigs and spider silk, wedged behind a loose slab of bark on a dead or dying tree, with an opening at either end. Song and calls are so high and thin that they lie at the upper limit of human hearing and are inaudible to many people.