Matchmaking for the birds

Federal naturalists bring a male red-cockaded woodpecker from the Panhandle together with a female near Brooksville. The effort aims to increase nesting pairs of the birds in the Withlacoochee State Forest.

By DAN DeWITT

© St. Petersburg Times, published October 22, 2000

[Times photos: Maurice Rivenbark] Moving through the Apalachicola National Forest, Vince Morris has his net extended to about 25 feet. (It can go nearly twice that high.) His goal is to capture a male red-cockaded woodpecker from its nest in a pine tree, then relocate it to the Withlacoochee State Forest.

APALACHICOLA NATIONAL FOREST -- The net Vince Morris stashes into the back of his pickup truck, with its long, telescoping handle, looks like it belongs in a Dr. Seuss story rather than on a federal wildlife recovery operation. In the cab, he places a homemade wooden box with a cover cut from an old pair of blue jeans.

Then they take off -- Morris and another state forester, Hunter Pape -- into the vast pine flatwoods of the Apalachicola National Forest in search of a red-cockaded woodpecker.

The plan is to capture six of the endangered birds in the Apalachicola, which has the largest red-cockaded population in the country, and move them to the Croom Tract of the Withlacoochee State Forest near Brooksville, where the woodpecker is all but extinct.

By tomorrow morning, if everything goes right, the birds will be forming new breeding pairs in Croom.

Five other teams of federal naturalists are out this evening as well, each assigned to capture a woodpecker. Each of those teams has done this many times before; Morris and Pape have done it only once.

So they really have two concerns: helping to save an endangered species in the forest where they work ... and trying not to make fools of themselves.

"We have the most likelihood of not catching a bird of anyone here," Morris says. "There's going to be more drama with us."

Chuck Hess has studied red-cockaded woodpeckers in the Apalachicola National Forest for 12 years. The Apalachicola population, the largest in the country, supplies the birds to more vulnerable areas.

Morris and Pape stop their truck in the forest near their assigned tree. The tall pines here have been growing since the 1930s, when this area was last clearcut. There is room between the trees for the evening sun to shine on a pasture of knee-high wire grass.

Red-cockaded woodpeckers are numerous here for the same reason they are scarce elsewhere: The species is particular about its habitat. The birds nest only in large pines, especially longleafs. They abandon their cavities whenever hardwoods start to crowd out the wire grass.

Longleaf pine forests still cover most of the half-million acres of the Apalachicola, which is home to about 1,500 birds. Across the Southeast, though, the inventory of such habitat has dwindled from an estimated 92-million acres, when European settlers first arrived, to 3-million acres now. The national population of red-cockaded woodpeckers has likewise fallen, from roughly 3-million to 12,500.

Though recent reports indicate this number is climbing, the news from Croom is undeniably grim. A 1998 survey of the tract found only one breeding group and four solitary males, down from more than 20 active clusters a decade earlier. Last year, the tract received three birds from Apalachicola. This year it was alloted six.

"We went with what is called the welfare strategy," says Chuck Hess, a federal wildlife biologist who has studied the woodpecker population in Apalachicola for 12 years. "The birds (were allotted) where the populations were in the worst shape."

Carrying net, box and an aluminum tree-climbing ladder, Morris and Pape walk a few hundred yards from the road to their bird's tree. It has been marked twice, once by Hess, with a white ring around its trunk, and once by the bird, which, like all red-cockaded woodpeckers, has pecked at the bark to release streams of resin that deter predatory snakes.

Morris adjusts the handle of the net so it reaches the medallion-sized hole about 25 feet up the trunk. He leans it out of view against a nearby tree and joins Pape, squatting in the the grass about 100 yards away. They listen for the woodpecker's chirp over mosquitoes that whine like downshifting race cars; they watch for its first swooping appearance around the hole as it prepares to roost for the night.

"You're going to be disappointed," Morris warns. "It's not a sexy megafauna."

Red-cockadeds are not as striking as some other woodpeckers and certainly not as spectacular as other species that carry the banner for habitat in Florida -- panthers, bears and manatees.

Growing to a length of 8 inches, it is one of the smallest woodpeckers. The dot of red behind the male's eyes is tiny almost to the point of being invisible. Its wings are black and white, and its most distinctive marking is the white patch on its cheek.

"It's kind of nondescript -- just a plain, ordinary-looking woodpecker," Morris says.

It interests naturalists, though, because its presence is a sign of healthy longleaf habitat. It also forms breeding clusters with some similarities to human families, especially the pattern of difficult adolescence.

Young females that fail to immediately find a male leave the group -- "dissipate," as the naturalists say -- meaning most of them probably die. (Removing a few from a healthy population, therefore, does not have much of an impact.) Young male birds often serve for several years as helpers in groups that may include as many as six adults.

"To me, a social structure indicates a certain amount of intelligence, and probably some good learned intelligence," Morris says.

"One of them is probably acting as a lookout right now."

More than an hour has passed since the wait began. Morris and Pape can hear the cricketlike call of a few birds and a clicking as they pick away at the bark, foraging in the last moments before nightfall. The silhouettes of two birds show up briefly on tree trunks near the targeted hole. Seconds later, they disappear, and the singing stops.

Pape and Morris are reasonably sure this means their bird has roosted, though neither has seen it happen. After watching for a few minutes, Morris retrieves his net and slowly slides it over the hole.

He and Pape then proceed through the progressively more aggressive methods of trying to coax the bird from its hole: rubbing a stick against the trunk, smacking it against the trunk, assembling the aluminum climbing ladder and chaining it to the tree.

"All this commotion should bring him out," Pape says, climbing.

"Do you see him?" Morris asks, thinking maybe the bird was spooked by their presence and never entered his cavity.

"Yeah, he's looking right at me," Pape says, from the top of the ladder, and bangs the side of the tree without result.

Morris holds the net with both hands, while mosquitoes feed uncontested on his neck and cheeks; Pape walks to the truck to retrieve a tiny light attached to the end of a wire. When it is lowered into the hole, it does not flush their woodpecker, as it was designed to.

Eventually, though, the bird attacks and follows the light as Pape pulls it out of the hole and into the net. The bird continues pecking as Morris rushes the bundle of net and bird back to the truck like an injured child.

He places the bird in the box and seals it with Velcro. "We usually resist naming them," he says, "but I have a feeling this one is going to be Rocky."

Having captured the woodpecker in one forest, Morris must put him into the cavity of a tree in another forest. Rocky's new home is a cedar box inserted into a rectangular hole in the pine.

The boxes from the other teams that caught woodpeckers this evening are consolidated to two vehicles. These set off on the five-hour trip to Croom, which for the birds includes a late night wait in the parking lot of the McDonald's in Perry while the crew grabs sandwiches. At about 2 a.m., the birds arrive at the forestry headquarters north of Brooksville. From here, they will be placed in the cavities of trees in Croom that have been carefully prepared for them.

Morris and others have worked hard to make the forest more hospitable to woodpeckers, especially by burning it more regularly. A showy white flower is common enough that in the bright moonlight, the blooms look like wet snowflakes. Some of the trees here, including the one where Rocky will live, are as old and large as those in Apalachicola.

But even at 2 a.m. it is clear that this is more like a reservation than a chosen homeland. The turkey oaks grow shoulder high. Rocky's cavity is a wooden box, inserted into a pine trunk and held there with Elmer's wood putty.

Morris climbs to it on the ladder. Because he lost track of which male bird was in which box on the ride down, he cannot be sure this bird is Rocky. But the way he fights as Morris tries to place him in the hole seems to confirm that he is. Once Morris manages to thrust him into the cavity, he covers it with screen, which is attached to the tree with upholstery tacks.

It's only the first date -- the morning after Rocky's arrival in the Croom Tract -- and already he and his female friend from the Croom are partners. The two follow one another through the forest, chirping loudly. Says Morris: "They're as happy as can be."

"He's going to be surprised," Morris says. "It's like you live in an eight-bedroom house with a pool and big yard, and suddenly you wake up in a two-bedroom house. You'll live, you'll be okay, but you won't be happy."

Maybe he will be happy. His new surroundings offer something his old life with Mom and Pop never did -- a solitary female in a cavity a few feet away from his new home.

"He'll have a breeding mate," Morris says, "and that's their mission in life."

Rocky is pecking at the screen by the time Morris, two other forestry workers and a pair of avid birders who will monitor the nest come back at 7:30 a.m.

After a few minutes, the female chirps, flies from her hole and perches on a thin pine tree near Rocky's. Morris pulls the screen away with a tug on a string. Before it can fall to the forest floor, Rocky is out of the nest, on his way to join her.

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