Society poses danger to red-headed woodpecker count
January 14, 2001

Only one red-headed woodpecker was reported during the Woodland Dunes 2000 winter bird count. Never common in the area, half a dozen or so are reported year after year during the summer bird counts. Other areas where the birds are more common report that numbers are diminishing. This is being blamed on loss of suitable habitat and frequent road kills. All too frequently the only red-headed woodpeckers seen are dead along the roadside. this is probably due to their feed habits in summer.

A common foraging technique is to swoop off a perch and pursue insects, which often ends in a low maneuver over a busy road. As traffic increases in number and speed, the red-headed birds are more frequently victims. Loss of habitat is generally considered the most serious problem. Because of their habit of hawking insects in the air, they need open space, well supplied with snags.

Stands of timber killed by fire, livestock flood or disease are especially attractive. These colorful birds favor edge habitat with an open canopy and isolated dead trees for nesting. Much of this type of landscape has been converted to farms and subdivision, with manicured landscapes.

Given a choice, redheads seem to prefer to forage on dead rather than live trees. The furrowed bark of oaks provide a surface for insects to hide. Logs lying and decaying are an important source of food. Oaks also provide food in the form of acorns. Called "mast" acorns and beech nuts provide a supply of food for over-wintering birds.

Even though a habitat includes mast providers, these trees are not dependable in their supply. Mast years may occur only every two to five years and even these intervals may be influenced by weather. Red-heads are adaptable, if the supply isn't available they head south. where there is an abundant mast crop the birds may be found in numbers as they were a few years ago in the southeastern corner of Manitowoc County where birders found them during the winter bird count.

during a good mast year it has been reported that redheads, usually family groups, set up small territories one per bird, and store acorns, other similar nuts and even grasshoppers in their territories. Later in the winter they relax, defend their territories and may even add to restore their caches. They have also been observed covering their stores with slivers of wood torn from the snags or hammering them into the deep furrows of the oak trees, frustrating the less able bird "thieves".

Those that return in the spring or have passed the winter successfully set up housekeeping in a hollow, often previously excavated by other species of woodpeckers. Their calls, a high pitched "queerk" and a rolling repeated "kwurr kwurr" are welcome sounds, and seeing them swoop down from some roadside telephone pole, a flash of red and white and glossy black, makes on resolve to leave any and all dead snags.

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