Red-Cockaded Woodpecker

In the world of North American woodpeckers, red-cockaded woodpeckers stand out as an exception to the usual rules. They are the only woodpeckers to excavate nest and roost sites in living trees. Living in small family groups, red-cockaded woodpeckers are a social species, unlike others. These groups chatter and call throughout the day, using a great variety of vocalizations. And they are one of only two woodpecker species protected by the Endangered Species Act. The other protected woodpecker species, the ivory-billed, had been assumed extinct for decades until sightings on a national wildlife refuge in the Southeast. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is working with Federal and State agencies and private landowners to keep red-cockaded woodpeckers from sliding to extinction. It's all about the habitat Red-cockaded woodpeckers live in mature pine forests—specifically those with longleaf pines averaging 80 to 120 years old and loblolly pines averaging 70 to 100 years old. From the late 1800s to the mid 1900s, red-cockaded woodpeckers declined rapidly as their mature pine forest habitat was altered for a variety of uses, primarily timber harvest and agriculture. Pine savannahs and open woodlands once dominated the southeastern United States and may have totaled more than 200 million acres at the time of European colonization. Longleaf pine communities may have covered 60 to 92 million of those acres. Today, fewer than 3 million acres remain. Listed in 1970 as endangered, red-cockaded woodpeckers once ranged from Florida to Maryland and New Jersey, as far west as Texas and Oklahoma, and inland to Missouri, Kentucky, and Tennessee. About 1 percent of their original range remains. Home is where the trees are About the size of cardinals, these woodpeckers excavate cavities exclusively in living pine trees, preferring older pines infected with the fungal red heart disease that softens heartwood. The birds need up to three years to excavate the cavities they use for nesting and roosting. The woodpeckers are faithful to their cavity trees, and each member of the group has its own roost cavity. Cavity trees occupied by a group are called a cluster and may include 1 to 20 or more trees on 3 to 60 acres. Red-cockaded woodpeckers peck holes around actively used cavities. These small wells exude resin that coats much of the tree. The birds keep the resin flowing as a defense against rat snakes and other predators. Red-cockaded woodpeckers play a vital role in …

• Publication year

  2021

• Venue

  CRC Handbook of Census Methods for Terrestrial Vertebrates

• Publication date

  2021-05-19

• Fields of study

  Biology, Environmental Science

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1201/9781003210320-40
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

• No references are available for this paper.

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