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Eurasian Treecreepers are small woodland birds. Their plumage is highly cryptic. Their upperparts are grey to greyish-brown, with copious streaks and scalloping in a cryptic pattern. They have white supercilia, dark-grey eye-stripes and a mostly white front, except for a slight brown tinge on belly, vent and undertail coverts. The folded upperwings are camouflaged by an intricate pattern of black and grey-brown bars with white specks. They have a characteristic big notch in their grey-brown wing bar. Their tail, which is grey-brown with a somewhat darker tip, is made of spiny feathers that help support the bird's weight while clinging to a tree trunk. The irises are dark-brown. The fine, down-curved bill has a grey upper mandible and an horn-coloured lower mandible. The legs and feet are grey.

The 3 races found around the Himalayas and south-eastern China will probably soon be given full species status as Hodgson's Treecreeper, Certhia hodgsonii.

The overall distribution of this species can be assessed, and specific locations where birds have been spotted can be found, based on individual sighting reports submitted by birdwatchers to ebird.org .

The global distribution of the Eurasian Treecreeper is available HERE .

There are about 10 extant races of Eurasian Treecreepers (for details see a field guide or, e.g. Wikipedia ), which have a wide-ranging overall distribution. Their overall range extends from the British Isles in the West to Japan in the East, and from inland Greece in the South to the base of the Kola peninsula in the North. In Asia the North-South extent of their range is smaller, covering basically the southern half of Russia, plus north-eastern China and the length of Japan. They are sedentary over most of their range. There are only two areas where migratory populations spend the northern winters, namely in the western part of Kazakhstan and in far-eastern Mongolia. While in the northern parts of their range they breed down to sea level, they tend to be highland specialists in the southern parts of their range, nesting at altitudes of typically above 1000 m, and up to more than 2000 m.

With a few exceptions (in northern Iberia, parts of France and in the Apennine mountians of Italy), Eurasian Treecreepers are sedentary on the British Isles, in the southern two thirds of Scandinavia and continental Europe, anywhere eastward of the river Rhine. While not found along the Mediterranean coastal fringe, they are present in the Balkans and in inland Greece. They are also sedentary in much of eastern Europe, out to the Ural mountains. In the North of their eastern European range, from central Finland eastward into continental Russia, they are found as summer breeding migrants, while in the Benelux countries and around the Danube River they are present only during the winter months.

Eurasian Treecreepers have a preference for forest and woodland, in particular dense patches therein. They are heavily reliant on trees with partially detached strips of bark for foraging, nesting and for sheltering in cold weather.

Race "familiaris"