One of the most common birds in the forest is the White-throated Treecreeper which can regularly be found in all wooded environments with a preference for Ironbark trees in the lower and mid canopy.
The less common but related Brown Treecreeper is a slightly larger and plumper bird which is more commonly found along creek lines where Box gums predominate. It also feeds from the ground, a behaviour that the White-throated Treecreepers rarely does.
The last of these “treecreepers” is the Varied Sitella, not a true treecreeper but a bird that shares many characteristics with the other two species.
The name Sitella is derived from the Italian name for a European bird, also known as the Nuthatch, that closely shares both the appearance and behaviour of the Australian species. How closely these birds are related is unclear but it seems to be an example of convergent evolution, where two almost identical species have evolved completely separately to each other under similar environmental pressures.
In contrast to the other treecreepers in the forest the Sitella occupies the upper canopy and feeds by travelling down the branches and trunk of a tree, picking up insects hidden from the other species.