by Ryan Ponto | May 26, 2017 | Bird Netting
Strong claws, short legs and stiff tail feathers enable woodpeckers to climb tree trunks and use their sharp bills to chisel out insects for food, make nest holes and drum territorial signals to rivals.
Second to the ivory-billed woodpecker, the pileated woodpecker is the largest commonly seen in North America. This perched bird is almost entirely black on its back and wings. A white chin and dark bill put the finishing touches on its distinguished look.
Preferring dense, mature forest, it seems to be adapting well to human encroachment, becoming more common and tolerant of disturbed habitats — so that very well could be the “rat-a-tat-tat” you hear at your front door.
In woodlands or your backyard you can listen for its slow, resounding hammering. If it’s nearby, look up, follow the sound and you’ll probably be able to spot its pointed, blood-red capped head on the side of a tree, leaving a long rectangular or oval hole. Carpenter ants in fallen trees and stumps are its major food source.
The tongue of the woodpecker is long, usually with barbed tips, so it can be thrust out to spear an insect and draw it out of its hiding place in the wood. The tongue is coated with sticky saliva that helps it gather small insects like ants, but they also eat berries, fruits and nuts.
You might say their diet consists of protein, fiber-rich carbohydrates and grains, which means low fat and natural sugars. Maybe we humans should adapt a woodpecker diet. But I don’t think that’s what my husband means when he says I eat like a bird at dinner time.
Larger holes can be found for nesting. Fine chips of wood form at the bottom of the hole to cushion the eggs. When hatched, the young are featherless.
Red-bellied woodpeckers look like zebras in flight with their black-and-white barred backs. The male has red on his crown and nape. Females only have red on their necks, but both have a reddish patch on their belly, thus the name red-bellied woodpecker. They are common in open woodlands and parks.
The red-headed woodpecker is definitely colorful, sporting an entire head of dark red plumage contrasting with a blue-black back and snowy white underside. It inhabits open woods, farmlands, parks and backyards, foraging tree trunks and the ground for insects, berries and acorns. It will utilize any vacant cavity in a fence post, dead tree or even an electric pole to store acorns for the winter.
My hanging bird feeder serves as a quick snack stop for numerous red-bellied woodpeckers, red-headed woodpeckers and even the small white-breasted nuthatch, a short-tailed acrobatic bird that looks very similar to a woodpecker the way it hangs upside down on the bird feeder and scales a tree trunk.
When you check out the rapping at your front door and find no one there, it could be that a woodpecker was making a visit. Now, if they start ringing the doorbell, well, I don’t know about that!
About Pigeon Patrol:
Pigeon Patrol Products & Services is the leading manufacturer and distributor of bird deterrent (control) products in Canada. Pigeon Patrol products have solved pest bird problems in industrial, commercial, and residential settings since 2000, by using safe and humane bird deterrents with only bird and animal friendly solutions. At Pigeon Patrol, we manufacture and offer a variety of bird deterrents, ranging from Ultra-flex Bird Spikes with UV protection, Bird Netting, 4-S Gel and the best Ultrasonic and audible sound devices on the market today.
Voted Best Canadian wholesaler for Bird Deterrent products four years in a row.
Contact Info: 1- 877– 4– NO-BIRD (www.pigeonpatrol.ca)
by Ryan Ponto | May 25, 2017 | Bird Netting
Since your column talks a lot about crows … For the last few years I have had two crows with a white feather on their wing and believed it was something white they had gotten into – maybe paint. Later I heard they were from Nova Scotia. I wonder if that’s true? Did they fly all the way over here?
Anyway, you asked me where Bear River got its name. Well, at one time a lot of bears lived in the woods here in Bear River and there are many rivers flowing through the trees. The bears are all gone now but as I walk through the trails I wonder if one might be lurking in the woods.
We have a walking trail back of our home and there’s an old tree with the bark all shaved off and sawdust down all around the tree on the ground. I heard a commotion around that area for days now and saw two Northern Flickers flying around. I thought I’d take a look and found a perfectly round hole in the tree that looked like a carpenter had drilled it out. How exciting. It’s carved perfectly round.
A red bucket has been hanging on the branch below the woodpecker hole for years and when I peeked inside there was a big pile of sawdust. It must have come from the hole because when I was sitting on my hammock, I saw the woodpecker pounding away at the hole and sawdust was flying everywhere. It made me wonder if he looked at that sawdust and was quite proud of his accomplishment.
While I am writing to you Brenda, do you know what kind of seeds woodpeckers eat? We have lots of little black and white woodpeckers with little red hats on the back of their heads. Maybe they eat more than insects.
In the trail behind my home I spotted an owl on a tree and then realized there were three of them. I can hear them hooting close by at night.
About Pigeon Patrol:
Pigeon Patrol Products & Services is the leading manufacturer and distributor of bird deterrent (control) products in Canada. Pigeon Patrol products have solved pest bird problems in industrial, commercial, and residential settings since 2000, by using safe and humane bird deterrents with only bird and animal friendly solutions. At Pigeon Patrol, we manufacture and offer a variety of bird deterrents, ranging from Ultra-flex Bird Spikes with UV protection, Bird Netting, 4-S Gel and the best Ultrasonic and audible sound devices on the market today.
Voted Best Canadian wholesaler for Bird Deterrent products four years in a row.
Contact Info: 1- 877– 4– NO-BIRD (www.pigeonpatrol.ca)
by Ryan Ponto | May 24, 2017 | Bird Netting
I recently had the opportunity to go out in the field with Kerry Brust, a red-cockaded woodpecker biologist in the North Carolina Sandhills. I went with Brust to put brightly colored and aluminum bands on nestling red-cockaded woodpeckers. It’s part of a research project begun in 1978, initiated by Dr. Phil Doerr and Dr. Jay Carter III of N.C. State University. Sandhills Ecological Institute, a nonprofit formed in 1998, continues the research in collaboration with Dr. Jeff Walters’ lab at Virginia Tech. The Sandhills institute was created to: research and monitor the longleaf pine (Pinus palustris) and related ecosystems in North and South Carolina; promote the study of and education about the longleaf pine and related ecosystems; engage in scientific studies and promote education regarding the red-cockaded woodpecker (Picoides borealis) and its habitats. The institute maintains demographic databases on the woodpeckers and studies the biology and behavior of the species. The studies have provided insights that are applied throughout the Southeast and have helped in the creating of important tools for managing the red-cockaded woodpeckers, such as artificial cavities and cavity restrictors. The intensive monitoring of the birds’ population entails inspecting the status of cluster and cavity trees, routine nest checks from April to July, color-banding nestlings and unbanded adults, conducting adult group census, and checking on fledglings to document whether reproduction is successful. Brust is co-director of the Sandhills institute with Jay Carter and is the supervising biologist. Two other full-time biologists assist her, Andy Van Lanen and Anna Prinz. Each year the institute monitors approximately 300 red-cockaded woodpecker clusters at Fort Bragg, Camp Mackall, the Sandhills Game Land, McCain Forest, The Nature Conservancy’s Calloway Forest, Weymouth Woods State Nature Preserve and various private lands.
We were out on Fort Bragg. Federal lands (including those owned by the Department of Defense) are required to protect federally listed species such as red-cockaded woodpeckers. The birds were listed as endangered in 1968 and were one of the first species covered under the 1973 Endangered Species Act. They are a non-migratory, cooperatively breeding species that lives in family groups and defends a set territory called a cluster. Clusters are the collection of cavity trees used by a single woodpecker family group. Groups can be a breeding pair only, or have as many as four to five generally related helpers. They’re considered an “umbrella” species, meaning other species also benefit from management for the red-cockaded woodpeckers, such as prescribed fire, thinning of understories, etc. We went out early in the morning, and since it was drizzling, we started our day just doing nest checks. This involves using a camera on a pole that can be stuck in the cavity. It sends an image down to a viewer where we can see what is in the nest. The first few nests had nothing in them but wood chips, which is how the woodpeckers prepare for egg laying. We finally found a newly hatched chick, about three days old, with eggs that still had not hatched. It stopped raining so we were able to go to a nest where babies needed to be banded. Brust climbs ladders that she stacks as she goes to get up to the cavity hole. She uses a delicate string noose to carefully remove the babies from the nest. Then she places them in a soft cotton bag to carry them down and back to the truck. Here she pulls them out and masterfully places bands on their legs while they are wriggling about and making soft chirping noises. Then she climbs back up and puts them safely back in their nest. The ideal age for banding nestlings is 6 to 8 days old. It was remarkable to get to see these birds up close. The North Carolina Sandhills population of red-cockaded woodpecker is just one of 13 Primary Core Recovery Populations the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service has designated throughout the Southeast as needed for complete recovery of the species. Although population increases have been observed within Sandhills public lands, the woodpeckers are still a protected species. While military training restrictions for the Army have been relaxed on Fort Bragg, regulations remain in place for development and timber harvesting that affect the woodpeckers’ foraging and nesting habitat. As with many listed species, the birds’ future remains precarious. It’s good that groups like the Sandhills Ecological Institute are helping watch over the species that remain.
About Pigeon Patrol:
Pigeon Patrol Products & Services is the leading manufacturer and distributor of bird deterrent (control) products in Canada. Pigeon Patrol products have solved pest bird problems in industrial, commercial, and residential settings since 2000, by using safe and humane bird deterrents with only bird and animal friendly solutions. At Pigeon Patrol, we manufacture and offer a variety of bird deterrents, ranging from Ultra-flex Bird Spikes with UV protection, Bird Netting, 4-S Gel and the best Ultrasonic and audible sound devices on the market today.
Voted Best Canadian wholesaler for Bird Deterrent products four years in a row.
Contact Info: 1- 877– 4– NO-BIRD (www.pigeonpatrol.ca)
by Ryan Ponto | May 23, 2017 | Bird Netting
NEW ULM — The electric distribution system in New Ulm is under attack from woodpeckers.
Over the last year, the New Ulm Electric Distribution Department discovered significant woodpecker damage to the wooden transmission line crossing the Minnesota River and connecting to the Fort Ridgely substation.
“It sounds quite humorous, but it is a recent phenomenon for us,” Utilities Director Patrick Wrase said. The wooden poles at the river crossing have been in place since the 1980s but no woodpecker damage has been noticed until the last few months.
“I don’t want call it an infestation, but we have a good population of woodpeckers in this area, and we’re dealing with the nesting of that group in our transmission poles across the river,” Wrase said.
Dan Pirsig with the Electrical Department gave a presentation about the woodpecker problem. Staff first noticed the damage on the poles crossing the river last fall. Repairs were conducted in January, and structural assessments were performed. The recommendation was to replace the poles.
Replacing the poles is estimated at $30,000 per transmission pole. At this time there are five poles with damage bringing replacement costs up to a total of $150,000. The wood poles would be replaced with steel poles to prevent further woodpecker damage. In addition, the steel poles cost less than the laminate wood poles
Currently there are only five poles with damage, but approximately 34 poles are at risk from woodpecker damage. The cost of replacing all at-risk poles would exceed $500,000.
Pirsig said this is a time-sensitive issue. This is an ongoing problem that will not go away. If the integrity of the poles is compromised, they could break off in a wind storm or blizzard.
Pirsig said the department will begin wrapping the poles in a mesh material as a preventive maintenance method and repair the damage already done.
Wrase said other cities have had success with the mesh wrapping. The wrapping can be purchased for under $100 and would cover multiple poles.
The replacement project will be budgeted in 2018 and details will be presented at that time.
In other news, the New Ulm Public Utilities Commission approved the execution of a settlement agreement with the Hutchinson Utilities Commission (HUC) to resolve the metering error and resulting over-billing for natural gas the Hutchinson Commission caused to the New Ulm Public Utilities Commission (NUPUC).
In April, a draft of the agreement was prepared and approved by the PUC. New Ulm City Attorney Roger Hippert submitted the document to HUC for consideration and has been informed the document will be accepted by HUC without any changes and can be considered the final settlement agreement.
The settlement calls for a $1,298,645.98 payment from HUC to NUPUC. Once received, the $1.3 million will go into a fund to replenish the gas departments reserves.
“The additional expenses have been paid out to our gas supplier throughout this process,” Wrase said. The cost of this overcharge was not passed on to utility rates, but reserve funds were used. This payment will cover the loss to gas reserves.
The payment from Hutchinson does not resolve the entire metering issue. At the close of the meeting, the PUC entered a closed session to discuss possible litigation related to unpaid unaccounted-for gas transported on the Fairfax gas pipelines to the Heartland Corn Products ethanol plant.
About Pigeon Patrol:
Pigeon Patrol Products & Services is the leading manufacturer and distributor of bird deterrent (control) products in Canada. Pigeon Patrol products have solved pest bird problems in industrial, commercial, and residential settings since 2000, by using safe and humane bird deterrents with only bird and animal friendly solutions. At Pigeon Patrol, we manufacture and offer a variety of bird deterrents, ranging from Ultra-flex Bird Spikes with UV protection, Bird Netting, 4-S Gel and the best Ultrasonic and audible sound devices on the market today.
Voted Best Canadian wholesaler for Bird Deterrent products four years in a row.
Contact Info: 1- 877– 4– NO-BIRD (www.pigeonpatrol.ca)
by Ryan Ponto | May 22, 2017 | Bird Netting
An older gentleman approached me at a recent Audubon chapter meeting. “Yep, I used to see plenty of them when I was a kid,” he said. “They hung around an old corn crib on our farm.”
Sadly, I have heard similar comments throughout my home state of Minnesota over the past few years. The old gentleman was correct; there used to be a lot more Red-headed Woodpeckers.
Since the 1960s, the species’ numbers have plummeted across most of its range. According to Minnesota Audubon, Red-headed Woodpeckers have declined almost 80 percent since the 1960s in Minnesota alone. They are also pretty much gone from our New England states, where, in the 1800s, a bounty was placed on the birds as they descended on, and cleaned out, farmers’ cherry orchards.
Numerous state breeding bird atlases and Christmas Bird Counts have documented the extent of the decline. The cause is a little more speculative. In the Upper Midwest, the drop correlates consistently with a loss of oak savanna habitat. Savanna is characterized by a flat, open understory interspersed with small clumps of living and dead oak trees. In Minnesota, over 98 percent of the original oak savanna is gone, mostly as a result of suburban development and intensive agriculture. Developers just love the land since it’s flat and has little water and few trees; there’s not much to do but just build homes.
For the past eight years, a small but energetic group of committed birders has been working to preserve and expand Red-headed Woodpecker habitat in the Upper Midwest. Through the group’s citizen-science research, we have learned a lot about the charismatic woodpecker and the habitat it needs to thrive.
The boldly marked bird is hard to confuse with other North American woodpeckers — even the poorly named Red-bellied Woodpecker. Both the male and female have almost identical red, black, and white plumage. The only way to distinguish gender is via DNA evidence.
Red-headed Woodpeckers are not shy, so, in one sense, they’re relatively easy research subjects, but they are cavity nesters and picky about habitat. Biologists refer to them as habitat specialists. In the Upper Midwest, two needs are essential: oak savanna with clumps of live and dead oak trees, and regular disturbance by fire.
Creating a savanna
We learned about the importance of frequent burning from biologist Rich King, the former naturalist at Necedah National Wildlife Refuge, in central Wisconsin. He had success creating an oak savanna out of what was pretty much an oak forest at the refuge. First he designated and preserved small clusters of live and dead trees. Then he chopped down the remaining trees and cleared the understory. Still, only a few birds showed up to inspect the new savanna. It wasn’t until a burning regime was initiated that things changed. The results were dramatic. Within three years of regular disturbance, 70 nesting pairs were present on the newly created savanna.
Why is burning so important? Most of us associate woodpeckers with pecking trees in search of insects, larvae, or grubs. Red-headed Woodpeckers, however, spend most of the spring and early summer catching flying insects. Their close cousins, the Acorn and Lewis’s Woodpeckers, do the same. The birds usually position themselves at the end of dead limbs and then either hawk insects (fly up) or stoop (drop down) to catch insects close to the ground. The thicker the understory, the more hiding places insects have. Regular burning keeps the understory low and makes insects more accessible.
Our Red-Headed Woodpecker Recovery Project initially considered building nest boxes (as had been so successful with the bluebird), but King convinced us it was more important to preserve and expand the oak savanna. The woodpeckers will excavate their own nest cavities if habitat is present.
With the help of 25 committed volunteers, the recovery project surveyed the entire state to discover the location of remaining healthy oak savannas where groups, or what we call clusters, of Red-headed Woodpeckers were present. (We define a cluster as three or more pairs in an area a quarter mile in diameter.) Individual pairs still remain throughout the southern and central parts of the state, but the pairs are scattered and often located in isolated telephone poles and a few remaining abandoned farmsteads. Few groupings or clusters remain.
Given this situation, it made sense to locate the remaining healthy groups of birds and then work with landowners and managers to retain, and hopefully expand, that habitat. Presently, groups of Red-headed Woodpeckers are holding their own in seven areas — four on state or federally owned and managed land, one on a private nature reserve, and two on golf courses. As natural oak savanna disappears, some birds have resorted to golf courses that are nature-friendly and have stands of red, white, or bur oak.
Key to our project is the cooperation of the University of Minnesota and its field station at the Cedar Creek Ecosystem Science Reserve, in East Bethel, just north of Minneapolis. The reserve encompasses over 5,400 acres of woods, wetlands, and oak savanna and is home to 30-40 breeding pairs of beautiful and raucous woodpeckers. Eight years of research at Cedar Creek has taught us a lot about the bird, its preferred habitat, and what we might do to expand its numbers.
So what have we learned? Red-headed Woodpeckers feed primarily on insects in the spring and early summer. The remainder of the year, however, they are opportunistic feeders — that is, not very picky. As the summer progresses, they begin to feed on fruits and berries. Then, in the fall, when the acorn crop matures, they eat both acorns and the grubs that are often inside them. Acorn crops are cyclical. In good years, some birds will cache the nuts to eat in winter. If the birds do not overwinter, we assume they move only far enough south to secure territory and food.
How and when the birds decide to overwinter, or to leave, is a mystery. In 2012, 180 mature and juvenile woodpeckers were in our 400-acre research area. The acorn crop was not good, but we were amazed at how rapidly the birds left. All but two departed in two or three days in the second week in August. How was the exit coordinated? Did the birds communicate with each other? In contrast, only a few woodpeckers flew away in August 2015, while 72 chose to overwinter. Do they not only sense the health of the acorn crop but also have clues to the severity of the winter? We are learning much, but the mysteries of overwintering still remain.
Most birders know that Red-headed Woodpeckers are cavity nesters. What may be less known is that, generally, they are high nesters. For more than 200 nests that we have documented, the average cavity height was about 26 feet, and our highest nest was 65 feet up. The loftiness helps explain why the birds fledge so many young; 75 percent of nests produce at least one fledgling. High nests discourage predation. Nesting preference is for dead trees or dead limbs in live trees. We have recorded successful cavities in the trunks of living oak and live aspen, but a survey of all nests shows the woodpeckers clearly prefer to nest in dead wood.
Egg-laying begins in early May, and the average clutch size is four to five eggs. It takes about 12-14 days for eggs to hatch and another 26 days until juveniles are old enough to fledge, for a total of about 40 days from egg-laying to fledging. On average, only two of the brood will survive to fledging. We are studying why brood success (that is, the number of fledglings per total eggs laid) is a little less than 50 percent, but our data are consistent with other studies and historical writings. It’s just another mystery waiting to be solved.
One rather nasty piece of news: Red-headed Woodpeckers are messy nesters. They do little, if anything, to keep their nests clean. Indeed, in one case, the male died while in the nest cavity, and the female laid her eggs on top of his carcass.
Research methods
Our research methods include color-banding and then observing nesting success with a narrow miniature camera mounted on an extendable pole. Careful monitoring of our work has shown little if any negative impact on the birds’ activities. The woodpeckers are not shy. In fact, once they recognize our surveyors, the birds often follow them around looking for a handout, as we stock scattered feeding stations with peanuts.
We have used both mist-nets and Potter traps (small cage-like traps) to capture birds. The first time we used a cage trap, we baited it with sunflower seeds and peanuts and inadvertently tossed in a few macadamia nuts that one of our researchers was snacking on. The first woodpecker to arrive immediately seized upon the macadamia nuts and was trapped. Since ours is a low-budget project, we quickly decided that we could not afford to use macadamia nuts regularly; the birds would have to settle for peanuts.
We have banded more than 170 Red-headed Woodpeckers with both metal numbered federal tags and colored plastic bands. We use six different colors, which afford us hundreds of possible combinations, so we can identify every bird from a distance. The first thing we learned, following our initial banding efforts, was that many of our birds return to the Cedar Creek savanna year after year. That may not sound stunning, but little, if any, published research demonstrates such site fidelity.
The first year, we banded 50 birds; none overwintered. The next spring, 17 of the banded birds returned. Recapture proved that we had banded them the previous spring. In addition, we have documented examples of nest-tree fidelity — that is, birds returning to either the same tree or one near it the following year. We are still gathering data, but we have also seen examples of year-to-year mate fidelity.
Red-headed Woodpeckers are often portrayed as territorial birds, and they are, but at Cedar Creek they also exhibit a clear colonial nature. All of the birds we have studied have been found in less than 400 of the reserve’s 5,400 acres. The reserve includes a few hundred additional acres of savanna, but they have not been burned regularly. This tells us that if adequate habitat, low understory, and food are present, the woodpeckers tend to cluster.
They do, however, remain territorial vis-à-vis their particular nest site but apparently don’t need much elbow room. We have recorded nests as close as 30 feet to each other. The birds will defend that perimeter but, other than that, seem content to have neighbors nearby. The size of the reserve’s colony varies between 30 and 40 verified nests per year.
Our research is important, but so, too, is our advocacy work across the region. We share our findings with agencies and landowners on whose land groups of birds persist. The work has been gratifying, as state and federal agencies have made commitments to expand oak savannas and to conduct regular burning of the understory. Recently, Sherburne National Wildlife Refuge, northwest of Minneapolis, agreed to recreate oak savanna on two parcels of forested land. Thanks to their efforts, Red-headed Woodpeckers were verified nesting at the refuge last year for the first time in 10 years, and this year, observers documented additional birds on another savanna area and on the auto-tour road. We have also helped with burns and serve as consultants for the Belwin Conservancy, a non-profit organization that is recreating oak savanna on the nearly 1,400 acres of permanently protected land it owns in Afton and West Lakeland townships, east of Minneapolis.
While most of our efforts focus on small clusters of woodpeckers — three to six pairs — a few years ago we discovered a concentration that may be even larger than the one we are studying at Cedar Creek. The colony is in an unlikely place — Camp Ripley, one of the largest National Guard training centers in the Midwest.
The facility covers 53,000 acres near Little Falls, in the central part of the state. Within it are two large firing ranges (totaling nine square miles) that are burned every year so troops can fire armaments and fighter planes can drop bombs. This may not sound attractive to you, but it is to the woodpeckers. Because of the yearly burns and many broken trees, the birds have set up shop in the firing ranges.
Forbidden to take one step onto the grounds due to unexploded ordinances, we can only drive two roads that circumnavigate both ranges and have to locate woodpeckers using spotting scopes and binoculars. On our first visit, we saw numbers of adults and juveniles. We can only guess how many pairs are present and what it takes to raise a brood within an active firing range. Still, our cursory surveys reveal that the birds are doing quite well. As an old fishing buddy used to say, “Go figure!”
Although we are only in the fledgling stage of research and habitat-recovery work, we are optimistic that something can be done to stop the decline of the Red-headed Woodpecker and to increase its numbers. A certain type of savanna habitat is essential, along with regular burning to sustain an open understory. In recent years, as the Cedar Creek staff has expanded the burning regime, the woodpeckers have moved into the newly burned territory and begun nesting.
It may be difficult to create new groups or clusters, but if an area has a history of hosting Red-headed Woodpeckers, and a few pairs remain, it is realistic to enhance and expand that habitat through land acquisition, selective tree cutting, and regular burning regimes.
Nothing is guaranteed, but we believe the wisdom from the movie Field of Dreams holds: If you build it, they will come.
About Pigeon Patrol:
Pigeon Patrol Products & Services is the leading manufacturer and distributor of bird deterrent (control) products in Canada. Pigeon Patrol products have solved pest bird problems in industrial, commercial, and residential settings since 2000, by using safe and humane bird deterrents with only bird and animal friendly solutions. At Pigeon Patrol, we manufacture and offer a variety of bird deterrents, ranging from Ultra-flex Bird Spikes with UV protection, Bird Netting, 4-S Gel and the best Ultrasonic and audible sound devices on the market today.
Voted Best Canadian wholesaler for Bird Deterrent products four years in a row.
Contact Info: 1- 877– 4– NO-BIRD (www.pigeonpatrol.ca)
