Endangered Woodpecker

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Saturday morning I drove up to W G Jones State Forest to look for the endangered Red-cockaded Woodpecker.

It didn't take long to find a nest hole. The woodpeckers tap sap so that it covers the bark below the nest and keeps snakes away.

Over the next 20 minutes I watched as first one parent and then the other returned with food.

Most times the parent would perch at the nest for only a few seconds and then fly off. Occasionally, though, one of them would climb down into the cavity before re-emerging and flying away.

At one point, both parents spent some quality time together exploring a nearby loblolly pine. 

I saw few other birds except a pair of Pileated Woodpeckers, three Red-headed Woodpeckers, a couple of Eastern Bluebirds and a handful of Blue Jays. However, the native garden near the offices had several species of butterflies, including Palmares Swallowtails.

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A Different Direction

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When it comes to birding locally, Dee and I usually head for sites that lie to the south of Cypress. However, on Sunday we decided to do the opposite and to head north to W G Jones Forest in Montgomery County. Our main reason for heading up there was because it's one of the few places where you can see the endangered Red-cockaded Woodpeckers. 

We got to the forest at 10:00 a.m. and walked down the trail to the "Stop" sign that marks the boundary of the area where the birds are currently nesting. We stooped near a pine tree whose trunk had been marked with white stripes and had had a nesting box inserted into it. Sure enough, within a couple of minutes a Red-cockaded appeared.

It climbed the trunk, checked out the nesting box and then continued on its way up the trunk.

 

We spent an hour walking the trails in the forest but didn't see another Red-cockaded. In fact, we saw surprisingly few birds: a Red-headed Woodpecker, an American Crow, a Pine Warbler, a Carolina Wren, a Turkey Vulture, a Northern Mockingbird, a few Chipping Sparrows, a couple of Eastern Bluebirds and Carolina Chickadees, several Brown-headed Nuthatches and White-eyed Vireos, and a flock of maybe 100 Cedar Waxwings.

To round off our visit, we went over to the garden near the headquarters building. To our amazement, the trees and feeders there were absolutely crowded with dozens of Pine Siskins, accompanied by only a handful of American Goldfinches.

The garden was also attracting some nice swallowtail butterflies.

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Looking for #250

My wife wasn't in the mood for birding yesterday but I decided to go out early to look for Red-cockaded Woodpeckers in the W G Jones forest. We had gone there together in June on an unsuccessful search for this highly endangered bird.)

I reached the site at 7:15 and walked the forest trails for the next 90 minutes without spotting a Red-cockaded. In fact, I only saw a total of seven birds: a Broad-winged Hawk, two N. Cardinals, two Eastern Bluebirds and two Red-headed Woodpeckers. So much for the benefits of ealy morning birding!

At 8:45, I started walking back to the car, stopping along the way to photograph the sign below as a memento of my trip.

As I took the photo, I noticed a movement high up in a nearby tree. Although the bird flew away almost immediately, I got a good enough look through my binoculars to see it had the distinctive almost all-white face of the Red-cockaded.

It would have been nice to get a photo of this my 250th species of 2009; however, it was already getting hot and so I continued walking back to the car. Then I noticed a movement on the trunk of another tree. A look through my viewfinder showed it was another Red-cockaded and I was able to grab two photos before it flew off. As you can see below, the photos are just clear enough to confirm the bird's ID.

W G Jones Forest

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Dee and I spent a couple of hours yesterday morning at W G Jones Forest, 40 minutes northeast of where we live. It has been several years since we last visited the site, which is one of the best places to see the endangered Red-cockaded Woodpecker and usually also has a good variety of other birds.

We had a very pleasant walk in the forest and saw a number of common birds: Black and Turkey Vultures, American Crows, Northern Cardinals, Carolina Chickadees, Blue Jays, Northern Cardinals, Eastern Bluebirds and Red-headed Woodpecker. However, we didn't spot a Red-cockaded Woodpecker, although two birders we met had seen a couple earlier in the morning. In the end, the only less-than-common birds we saw were a Prothonotary Warbler and a female Orchard Oriole, both of which were impossible to photograph.

It wasn't a total waste of time taking along my camera, though, because I managed to get a reasonable photo of a Palamedes Swallowtail butterfly.