Nature News – August 2016: Brown Treecreeper Super-Group
Posted on 2 August, 2016 by Connecting Country
For this month’s Nature News, Connecting Country’s Woodland Birds Coordinator, Tanya Loos, celebrates the cooperative spirit of the Brown Treecreeper. You can read it in print on page 34 in the August 2nd 2016 edition of the Midland Express.
Some birds are so rare and hard to find that it is a delight to catch a glimpse of them, such as the Painted Button-quail or Powerful Owl. Other birds are classified as rare, but where they occur they are noisy and noticeable, and present in good numbers. A good example of this is the locally abundant, but threatened, Brown Treecreeper.
The social Brown Treecreeper can be spotted in the forests around Castlemaine. Photo by Geoff Park
Brown Treecreepers may be seen in most patches of forest and woodland in the Castlemaine region, especially in Muckleford and Newstead. They are tubby brown birds which hop along the ground, scamper along fallen logs, and creep up trees in the manner of treecreepers. Their call is a strident ‘spink spink’ and as the treecreepers are very social, you may hear lots of calls and see wing-fluttering as the birds sort out who is who in the flock.
Brown Treecreepers are particularly frisky at the moment, as the year’s breeding has begun! This species breeds cooperatively, that is, the young from previous years help the parents raise the young. These family groups usually number from three to eight birds. And then, in a totally cool twist – these family groups will team up with neighbouring family groups to form a super-group! A super-group or clan is a large group where most males from any group will help at any of the nests of the super-group.
If you are lucky enough to have a super-group on your bush block, you might wonder why these birds are considered rare! Brown Treecreepers are widespread across our region, but in neighbouring areas such as the Ballarat region, they have become locally extinct. Their habitat needs are quite specific, and if the changes in the landscape are too great, they simply disappear from that area.
Brown Treecreeper families have home ranges that may be as large as twelve hectares, and they need this patch to be continuous, good quality habitat. Even a gap of one kilometre is too far for them to cross! Their patch needs to have plenty of large old trees, logs on the ground, an abundance of fallen timber and leaf litter, and grass tussocks. Heavily burnt public land or very sparse cleared private land does not have the habitat complexity these birds need to find food and raise their young.
To find out more about Brown Treecreepers and the other members of the Feathered Five, see Connecting Country’s woodland birds section on our website (CLICK HERE).
Wow! I didn’t know this about the lovely ‘browns’. Its so curious, I have brown treecreepers out on the bush block, and even though that adjoins my house, at home I only see the white-throated – I assume the latter must like edges. I will look out for my local ‘brown’ super groups.
Hi Tanya.
Great story. I regularly visit my bush block on Rodborough Rd Joyces Creek to collect firewood (we generally only take the larger fallen logs and branches and leave the smaller heads) and almost invariably see brown tree creepers. I enjoy the way they work from lower to higher frquently spiriling around the trunk and then flit to the base of another tree.