Treecreepers | Certhiidae

Boomkruipers | Agateadores

Small, brown-speckled birds that climb a tree trunk like a mouse, always from bottom to top and in a loose spiral around the trunk; high in the crown they let go and fly to the foot of the next tree to start again. The tail is stiff and pointed, with strong shafts, and is pressed against the bark at every step as a third point of support, so that the bird leans back against the trunk and never climbs head down. The bill is thin, long and curved like tweezers and probes bark crevices for spiders, insects, eggs and pupae; the toes are long and the claws strongly curved. The nest is a cup of bark, moss and feathers tucked behind a loose flap of bark. The voice is very high, so high that older observers often miss the bird altogether. In Mexico and Central America only the Brown Creeper occurs, as a resident of cool pine-oak forest and cloud forest in the mountains, from northern Mexico into Nicaragua; it is absent from the lowlands.