Howdy, friends.  As promised, birds are back.  Our bird this week is called the wallcreeper, whose Greek name, Tichodroma muraria means “which runs on walls.”  It is a small passerine bird found through large stretches of Europe and Asia that prefers to live in and among rocky terrain.  It will even accept an environment that merely functions like a sheer rock face, as it is commonly found in cathedrals, quarries and viaducts.  A vagrant was found in the Netherlands living on the campus of a university in Amsterdam, whose large, rectangular buildings must have felt like home.  

The wallcreeper’s range extends from the Atlantic coast of Spain to the Pacific coast of China.  It is a resident throughout much of its range, but moves to lower elevations in winter.  It also appears to migrate at least a bit at the eastern and western edges of its range.  Of course, because its range is so large, “just a bit” ends up being hundreds of miles.

True to its whole mountainous deal, the wallcreeper tends to live at high altitudes from around 1,000 and 3,000 meters (3,300 and 9,800 ft) in Europe all the way to 5,100 meters (11,800 and 16,700 ft) in the Himalayas.  They mostly eat small invertebrates they hunt on and around their territory, a giant rock or collection of rocks.  They will also occasionally catch flying insects in brief sallies.  Breeding pairs will vigorously defend their territory during breeding season, and single birds will defend theirs just as aggressively when they are not paired up.  On that note, our new word this week is “massif,” which means a specific section, or group of peaks in a mountain range.  Wallcreepers will establish a given quarry or massif as their own territory.  Exactly which mountain peaks belong to one tiny bird versus another has been tough for scientists to ascertain.

Wallcreepers are apparently quite chill.  Wikipedia uses the word “tame,” but I’m not really sure how that could apply to a tiny wild animal that knows which gargantuan edifice of granite belongs to it and which doesn’t.  Despite this tameness, they are reluctant to be observed.  They will hide in their nests if they detect people and will take alternate and/or circuitous routes if they know they are being watched. They are so good at hiding in their cyclopean natural environment that one was not photographed until 1980.

The female bird will build a nest and incubate the eggs for around three weeks, her mate will make sure she is well fed during this time.  The chicks hatch blind, featherless and entirely helpless.  Both parents will care for them for around a month until they fledge.   

The wallcreeper is rated as “of least concern” by the IUCN.  It has a positively gargantuan range of 16,700,00 square kilometers, and its population appears to be holding steady, which is always a nice note on which to end one of these headers.  Be kind to yourselves and others.

Links: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallcreeper, https://tinyurl.com/4smhh7pf, https://tinyurl.com/4tsfjfa2, https://tinyurl.com/ykwhp6kr, https://tinyurl.com/2r34p5hj, https://tinyurl.com/3ftf2yt5, https://tinyurl.com/3d8etmk9, https://tinyurl.com/5bkbe5ps