Pīpipi

The pīpipi was formally described in 1789 by the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin in his revised and expanded edition of Carl Linnaeus's Systema Naturae. He placed it with the tits in the genus Parus and coined the binomial name Parus novaeseelandiae. Gmelin based his description on the "New-Zealand titmouse" that had been described in 1783 by the English ornithologist John Latham in his book A General Synopsis of Birds. The naturalist Joseph Banks had provided Latham with a watercolour painting of the bird by Georg Forster who had accompanied James Cook on his second voyage to the Pacific Ocean. The specimen had been collected in 1773 at Dusky Sound on the southwest coast of New Zealand. This picture is now the holotype for the species and is in the collection of the Natural History Museum in London. The pīpipi was formerly placed in its own genus Finschia. A DNA study published in 1987 found that it was closely related to the whitehead and yellowhead, so Finschia was merged into Mohoua, a genus that was introduced by the French naturalist René Lesson in 1837. The species is monotypic: no subspecies are recognised. There are four Māori names for the species: , , and . Handbook of the Birds of the World Volume 12 (2007) called Mohoua novaeseelandiae the "New Zealand brown creeper". Australian ornithologist Peter Higgins noted that this was a departure from the usual New Zealand name of "brown creeper", and also from the Birds of the World recommendation. The Field Guide to the Birds of New Zealand (2015) calls it the "brown creeper", with "pipipi" as an "other name". The fifth edition of Checklist of the Birds of New Zealand, published by the Ornithological Society of New Zealand (OSNZ) in 2022, gives the common names "brown creeper | pīpipi", with the first name being the one that had been used most often in the OSNZ journal Notornis over the preceding decade. ==Description==

A warm mix of brown and chestnut on the upper part of the bird whilst the lower section is a noticeably paler brown. The head is a mix of patches of chestnut brown and dark brown with spots and streaks. The face and zones behind it can be an ash/dark grey. The whiteish eye stripe is another distinguishing feature of brown creeper. The legs and beak are a pinkish or grey-brown colour. The tail is long, frayed and has a distinctive dark bar at the tip and the eyes are a dark reddish brown. Juveniles can be distinguished from adults before May as the juveniles have yellow bill flanges and dark brown legs. Juveniles are distinguishable by having a greyer head, i.e. less reddish-brown, in addition to lacking the white stripe behind the eye. Brown creepers moult in late summer. The males weigh on average 13.5 g, whilst the females weigh on average 11.0 g. Brown creepers are about 13 cm in size. Brown creepers are the least known of the three species in the genus, despite being relatively common. This is due to them often being heard, but not seen as they live amongst the tree canopies and rarely feed on the ground. Their conversational song is also relatively indistinct (raspy calls) compared to other small bird species, making them further difficult to identify. Brown creepers are vocal all year round except when they are moulting in late summer. == Distribution and habitat ==

South of Cook Strait, New Zealand They are distributed widely, but patchily, in forests of the South Island, with some isolated populations persisting in places such as Banks Peninsula, Mount Peel, Hunters Hill and locations throughout Otago. Common on some off shore islands in Fiordland (Secretary, Resolution and Chalky) and Marlborough Sounds (D'Urville, Arapawa and Maud). Widely common on Stewart Island and its surrounding islands (Ulva and North-East Muttonbird). Brown creepers are particularly abundant on Codfish Island. Brown creepers inhabit a diverse range of habitats. These include native beech and podocarp forest, exotic plantations as well as willow, gorse and broom, regenerating forest, mānuka or kānuka scrub forests, the river flats of the east and the higher altitude mountain/silver beech and red/silver beech forests in the mountains. They will happily live in areas from the sea to the treeline. Their preferred area of the South Island is to the west and north of the Southern Alps as well as Fiordland. The dry scrub forests of Marlborough and Canterbury are also common habitat for brown creepers. Brown creepers that breed at high altitude will come down to the lowlands and form flocks in the winter. Other than that they are non-migratory. For nesting, brown creepers prefer dense vegetation in the forest canopy. Their numbers have declined since Europeans arrived in New Zealand due to destruction of lowland forest and the arrival of mammalian predators. ==Behaviour and ecology==

Breeding Brown creepers are monogamous and display high rates of mate fidelity. They will usually only change mates if their previous mate dies as opposed to just general mate swapping or divorce. In September females will build a nest out of bark, twigs, grass, moss, leaves, leaf skeletons and lichen, all of which is bound together with cobwebs and lined with grasses, feathers and wool. The nest is a deep cup shape and usually takes between 5–17 days to construct. The nest is built in dense canopy vegetation, scrub or low trees between 1m and 10m above the ground. The male will guard the female during this nest building phase as well as 2–3 days before the egg is laid. Brown creepers can lay their eggs from late September until early February. Males will not only guard the females during the 2–3 days prior to the eggs being laid but during the first part of the laying period as well. Female brown creepers will normally have two clutches per season with egg laying peaks in early October and late November. They can have up to four clutches in a season if the nest fails early on but they will only ever brood two clutches of eggs. Brown creepers will have 2–4 eggs at 24 hour intervals. The size of the egg is 18.5mm x 14mm and weights on average 1.9g. The female will incubate the eggs alone for 17–21 days until the eggs hatch. The eggs are white – dark pink and are speckled reddish brown. Feeding on fruits is especially common in the autumn. Brown creepers are more likely to glean invertebrates from small branches and leaves in the canopy, though they do sometimes hang upside down from branches in order to forage for invertebrates. Though gleaning is the most common form of foraging for invertebrates, brown creepers will also feed on invertebrates under loose bark or on large branches. They will only rarely forage and feed on the ground preferring to forage more than 2 m off the ground. Birds will sometimes forage in their breeding pairs but more commonly tend to forage in flocks of 3-12 birds. These flocks usually include loose family groups, juveniles and occasionally other pairs when outside of the breeding season. Pairs will forage together in their territory during the breeding season. ==Predators, parasites, and diseases==

Parasites – long-tailed cuckoo Brown creepers are one of the main hosts for the long-tailed cuckoo in the South Island and Stewart Island and can sometimes be seen feeding a much larger cuckoo chick during the summer months. Brown creepers have a high rate of rejection for long-tailed cuckoo eggs in their nests. This is due to the fact that brown creepers have an open nest as opposed to a closed or cavity nest. Having an open nest allows for more light to get in and increases the chance of the birds noticing a foreign egg. Despite all of this the long-tailed cuckoo is very host specific and chooses to mimic the eggs of brown creepers. It has been shown through fossil records of their food deposits that they would have preyed on brown creepers. ==Other information==

Use of UV light vision to recognize foreign eggs There has been some research done that may indicate the use of UV wavelength light in brown creepers' ability to recognize long-tailed cuckoo eggs. Brown creepers are known to reject long-tailed cuckoo eggs whereas yellowheads and whiteheads, who are close relatives of brown creepers, tend not to. The research showed that both the brown creeper and yellowhead lacked a short-wavelength sensitive (SWS1) opsin gene which has large effects on the range of light that can be seen. ==Notes==