Guest commentary
THE LAND, SEPTEMBER 6, 2013
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Red-headed woodpecker recovery P.O. Box 3169 418 South Second St. Mankato, MN 56002 (800) 657-4665 Vol. XXXII ❖ No. XVIII 48 pages, 2 sections, plus supplement
OPINION
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By RICHARD SIEMERS The Land Correspondent From out of the past comes a fiery red-head with the speed of light, a flash of black and white, and a hearty “rat-a-tat-tat.” The red-headed woodpecker. I apologize for that dramatic outburst, but sighting a red-headed woodpecker as a farm boy was as exciting as it was to hear the Lone Ranger come on the radio years ago. It is even more exciting these days. The excitement is intensified because it is such a rare occurrence. There has been a precipitous decline in the number of red-headed woodpeckers over the past 40 years. There are states in the eastern United States where the bird is listed as “threatened” and even “endangered.” In the Midwest, numbers have declined close to 50 percent during those 40 years. These facts are among the information Red-headed Woodpecker Recovery has on its website, www.redheadrecovery.org. Red-headed Woodpecker Recovery is a project of the Audubon Chapter of Minneapolis and was initiated by two members with a background in bluebird recovery. Jerry Bahls, who is now president of the Audubon Club, was the first coordinator, a position currently filled by Chet Meyers. The loss of such a flashy bird would be sad, but the project is about more than saving a colorful creature. “The loss of any species impacts on the health of the environment,” Meyers said in an e-mail interview. “We are just too ignorant to appreciate all the implications.” But we aren’t ignorant of the causes behind the drop in numbers. It is loss of habitat. As the website explains, red-headed woodpeckers need a specific habitat — oak savanna with snags. Oak savanna has mature trees with an open understory where red-headed woodpeckers can catch the beetles, grasshoppers and other insects of their diet. Snags are dead trees with large limbs to accommodate cavities for nesting. The Audubon Club of Minneapolis is working with Minnesota Department of Natural Resources NonGame Division and the University of Minnesota’s Cedar Creek Ecosystem Science Reserve on Redheaded Woodpecker Recovery. Efforts at Cedar Creek have shown that if habitat is provided, the redheaded woodpecker will come. But even there the numbers fluctuate. According to Mary Spivey, education coordinator at
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INSIDE THIS ISSUE: Special feature, 6A-10A — Farm Stress: Agriculture is a dangerous industry, and some of that danger is psychological
Cedar Creek, spotters located 32 nests in their 2013 annual count, down from 50 nests last year. Jim Howitz is a researcher in the red-headed woodpecker study at Cedar Creek, and shared his experience in e-mail correspondence. He told how by placing a feeding platform near a nest, they were able to trap and band 50 birds with a unique combination of colored bands so individual birds could be recognized, helpful since “males and females look just alike.” Males and females also share duties equally — excavating the nest, incubating eggs and feeding the babies. “One of the dangers red-headed woodpeckers face is vehicle traffic,” Howitz said. “We found three woodpeckers killed by collisions with vehicles along the county road that adjoins the study area. One of the birds killed was a female who had babies in the nest. See WOODPECKER, pg. 3A
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