Treecreepers

Danny Boyd kindly sent in a picture of Treecreeper recently taken at the Quoile, Co. Down. A day before I was sent a picture of a Treecreeper that I had seen in Bucharest and was photographed by Cristian Mihai. Puzzled by them looking so different (particularly the wing bar) and wanting to know if the Romanian bird was actually a Short-toed Treecreeper, I checked up the Collins Bird Guide. Unknown to me was that there are two European races of Treecreeper - the Western race (macrodactyla) and the North \ Eastern Continental race (familiaris). The pictures below are of each and you can see the differences for yourself:
Treecreeper NI:

Treecreeper (Northern Ireland) - Danny Boyd

Treecreeper, Romania:

Treecreeper, Romania, Cristian Mihai

On the Romanian bird, you can see the bolder, whiter supercillium extending to forehead, wing bar is more broken with a strong black notch. The back \ mantle in this sub-species also has a lot more speckled white. Another distinguishing feature, the plain white underparts are not visible in this photograph. Something new (again) and whilst I do not expect to see one in NI, it has opened my eyes to this species!