by Ryan Ponto | Jul 16, 2017 | Bird Netting
The first red-cockaded woodpeckers to be hatched in the Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge in at least four decades were welcomed in early May by biologists.
Two of three chicks survived and have since been seen flying around with their parents. The woodpeckers are an endangered species.
“It’s a real milestone,” said Bryan Watts, director of The Center for Conservation Biology, and a first step in establishing a population of the swamp’s once indigenous bird. It’s also part of a larger recovery effort that includes a growing colony in Sussex.
“We’re sort of holding the line up here from keeping the species from contracting further south,” Watts said.
The red-cockaded woodpecker is a small, black and white bird named for the male’s flash of red feathers. They’re unique in that they carve their homes in live trees and mate for life, though young are raised by a collaborative group.
The birds once numbered in the hundreds of thousands in the Southeast and as far north as New Jersey, biologists say. But logging, development and forestry practices reduced the bird’s habitat and sparked a 20th century decline.
The species was listed as endangered in 1970, and hadn’t been seen in the Great Dismal Swamp since 1974. Public and private agencies have been working for years to get the population back up. The Nature Conservancy’s Piney Grove Preserve in Sussex is the only other Virginia enclave and home to 70 birds broken into 14 breeding groups, Watts said.
Over the past two years, 18 woodpeckers have been released into artificial roosts in the Great Dismal Swamp, relocated from populations in North and South Carolina. There were slim hopes the five remaining birds – two males, three females – would reproduce this year.
“But the birds worked it out,” Watts said.
Two nests with eggs were discovered initially. Three chicks hatched in the first nest on May 13, but one bird was grossly underweight and died, biologists said. The second nest was found devoid of eggs or babies. Biologists suspect a snake got them before they hatched.
Colored leg bands, which the surviving birds got at 7 days old, help scientists track them, according to Watts and Jennifer Wright, biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services.
The birds are featherless and rubbery at that age – primitive looking and golf-ball sized – yet still flexible and hardy, Watts and Wright said. The chicks’ eyes are initially closed. They can only discern light and dark, which makes them easier to extract from the nest.
Still “you want to be careful,” Wright said. “It’s all by feel.”
About Pigeon Patrol:
Pigeon Patrol Products & Services is the leading manufacturer and distributor of bird deterrent (control) products in Canada. Pigeon Patrol products have solved pest bird problems in industrial, commercial, and residential settings since 2000, by using safe and humane bird deterrents with only bird and animal friendly solutions. At Pigeon Patrol, we manufacture and offer a variety of bird deterrents, ranging from Ultra-flex Bird Spikes with UV protection, Bird Netting, 4-S Gel and the best Ultrasonic and audible sound devices on the market today.
Voted Best Canadian wholesaler for Bird Deterrent products four years in a row.
Contact Info: 1- 877– 4– NO-BIRD (www.pigeonpatrol.ca)
by Ryan Ponto | Jul 15, 2017 | Bird Netting
Downy Woodpeckers are year-round residents of our area, raising their families in summer as well as spending winters here. When the breeding season arrives, a pair selects a nest site in a dead branch and sets to work excavating a cavity. Both male and female dig the cavity, and all the work is done with their beaks — breaking off pieces of wood and discarding them as the nest takes the shape of a gourd, larger at the bottom.
You can tell the male from female because the male has a red patch on the nape of his neck. Females lack this colorful adornment.
Woodpeckers employ three strategies for safe and secure nests. They need to be hard to find, difficult to reach, and hard to get into. A nest that is well-hidden high in a tree is difficult for such predators as snakes and raccoons to find and reach. And, if reached, a cavity nest with a small entrance is hard to get into.
It takes the pair about 16 days to excavate the nest, then male and female take turns incubating the three to nine eggs the female lays. It takes just 12 days for them to hatch.
With as many as nine babies in the nest, it must be hard to keep it clean, right? Baby woodpeckers are fed several times each hour, and what goes in must come out.
Removal of baby woodpecker poo is made easier because it comes out in the form of a fecal sac — a gelatinous capsule that Papa carries in his beak and drops well away from the nest.
Leaving the nest must be a little scary for young woodpeckers. Imagine looking out of the nest from 15 feet up the tree and trying to fly for the first time.
Young downy woodpeckers do this when they’re just 3 weeks old.
The fledglings are fed by the parents for another 3 weeks, then they’re on their own.
Of the seven species of woodpeckers that can be found in this area, the downy is the second most common, outnumbered only by the red-bellied woodpecker.
Both the downy and the red-bellied can be seen in most suburban neighborhoods that have lots of trees. You can enjoy these birds by stocking a simple tube feeder with sunflower seeds. Nuthatches, chickadees, titmice and finches will also be drawn to these feeders, providing you with many hours of pleasure enjoying these birds.
About Pigeon Patrol:
Pigeon Patrol Products & Services is the leading manufacturer and distributor of bird deterrent (control) products in Canada. Pigeon Patrol products have solved pest bird problems in industrial, commercial, and residential settings since 2000, by using safe and humane bird deterrents with only bird and animal friendly solutions. At Pigeon Patrol, we manufacture and offer a variety of bird deterrents, ranging from Ultra-flex Bird Spikes with UV protection, Bird Netting, 4-S Gel and the best Ultrasonic and audible sound devices on the market today.
Voted Best Canadian wholesaler for Bird Deterrent products four years in a row.
Contact Info: 1- 877– 4– NO-BIRD (www.pigeonpatrol.ca)
by Ryan Ponto | Jul 14, 2017 | Bird Netting
With a decision forthcoming on proposed protections for a rare species of woodpecker found in the Black Hills, a new population estimate for the bird has provoked warring reactions from opposing sides of the debate.
A master’s thesis presented in May by Elizabeth Matseur of the University of Columbia-Missouri estimated a population of 2,920 black-backed woodpeckers in the Black Hills in 2015, and 3,439 in 2016.
Those numbers are about three to four times higher than the estimate included in a still-pending 2012 petition to list the birds as a threatened or endangered species.
The petition was submitted by four environmental and conservation groups. A decision is required by Sept. 30 from the director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, in cooperation with the secretary of the Department of the Interior.
A Black Hills timber industry group opposes the listing because it could result in more protected habitat for the birds, and therefore reduced logging, in the Black Hills National Forest.
Ben Wudtke, forest programs manager for the Black Hills Forest Resource Association, said the new research disproves the case for listing the birds as threatened or endangered.
“This study should put the final nail in the coffin and show that black-backed woodpeckers are doing very well in the Black Hills,” Wudtke said.
Chad Hanson, a representative from one of the groups that submitted the petition, said that simply is not true because the student researcher’s findings are fundamentally flawed.
Hanson is an ecologist for the John Muir Project of Earth Island Institute in Big Bear City, Calif. He said the new research has “one major flaw” — a buffer area of 500 meters between sites where birds were counted, rather than 1,500 meters, which Hanson said is the appropriate standard.
“To avoid overcounting, you have to take that into account,” Hanson said. “They would’ve counted some birds not just twice, but with a 500-meter buffer, they very likely would’ve counted some birds three times or more.”
In other words, Hanson thinks the population estimates in the new research might be inflated by a factor of three. But even if the new estimates are accurate, he said, they still fall below the threshold of 4,000 individual birds that the petition cites as necessary to avoid a risk of extinction.
Matseur, the author of the thesis, said she and her collaborators accounted for the likelihood of individual birds being counted more than once.
“We feel this is an accurate model and population estimate,” Matseur said.
The research was sought by the U.S. Forest Service’s Rocky Mountain Research Station, which provided support for the work along with partners including state government agencies in South Dakota and Wyoming, Matseur said.
Matseur and a crew of up to five helpers spent the summers of 2015 and 2016 doing a combined 1,800 miles of off-trail hiking in the Black Hills. They followed predetermined routes and stopped for five minutes apiece at predetermined points to watch and listen for black-backed woodpeckers. Each detection point was visited three times per summer.
In all, the team made 7,110 stops at the detection points and logged 362 detections of black-backed woodpeckers.
“Sometimes we would go a week without detecting a woodpecker,” Matseur said, “but that made it more exciting when we got one.”
Matseur and her team put their data into a statistical model that included additional factors, such as forest conditions, to produce estimates of the total black-backed woodpecker population in the Black Hills.
The birds are about the size of a robin and are adapted to peck insect larvae from trees in burned areas of the forest. The black-backed woodpeckers in the Black Hills of South Dakota and Wyoming are said to be a genetically distinct subspecies, as are another population of black-backed woodpeckers in Oregon and California. The two groups are the only ones covered by the petition for threatened or endangered status.
The petition groups say that decades of firefighting, fire prevention and post-fire logging have destroyed much of the charred and snag-filled habitat — full of dead and dying trees — that black-backed woodpeckers need for long-term viability.
A mountain pine beetle epidemic in the Black Hills that lasted from the 1990s through last year created some additional habitat for the birds, which is a factor that could account for increased numbers. But researchers say the snag-filled areas created by mountain pine beetles are not as conducive to a thriving black-backed woodpecker population as the snags created by fires.
Managers of the Black Hills National Forest already strive to preserve some black-backed woodpecker habitat. If the birds are listed as threatened or endangered, forest managers could be required to protect more areas for the birds.
“The result is, there would be less logging,” said Hanson, of the John Muir Project. “That’s almost certainly true. And there should be. Ecologically, that is what’s called for here.”
In national forests, the U.S. Forest Service selects areas to open for logging and sells logging rights to private companies through a competitive bidding process. For timber that was cut during the 2016 fiscal year in the Black Hills National Forest, the Forest Service received $2.17 million, according to the agency’s quarterly reports.
About Pigeon Patrol:
Pigeon Patrol Products & Services is the leading manufacturer and distributor of bird deterrent (control) products in Canada. Pigeon Patrol products have solved pest bird problems in industrial, commercial, and residential settings since 2000, by using safe and humane bird deterrents with only bird and animal friendly solutions. At Pigeon Patrol, we manufacture and offer a variety of bird deterrents, ranging from Ultra-flex Bird Spikes with UV protection, Bird Netting, 4-S Gel and the best Ultrasonic and audible sound devices on the market today.
Voted Best Canadian wholesaler for Bird Deterrent products four years in a row.
Contact Info: 1- 877– 4– NO-BIRD (www.pigeonpatrol.ca)
by Ryan Ponto | Jul 13, 2017 | Bird Netting
How’s this for a happy problem: Several North Jersey backyard birders report that downy woodpeckers have been hogging the sugar water in their hummingbird feeders this summer.
What nerve!
Most folks view the interlopers more as a phenomenon than an irritant, but after asking around, I’ve found that the freeloading is fairly widespread, and it has likely been going on for as long as there have been hummingbird feeders,
A quick search of my old emails found that a reader had written to me seven years ago about the problem and — heaven forbid — I never replied. Think of this column as part belated apology and part how-to article.
Don Torino of the Bergen County Audubon Society says that “it seems in the last few years downys at hummingbird feeders have become very common. Some folks seem a little frustrated at times but most think it’s a very interesting behavior.”
Torino’s solution for the frustrated folks: “Put up an extra feeder and enjoy the hummers and the woodpeckers together. It shouldn’t be about trying to control wildlife behavior. Just sit back and enjoy the show.”
When you think of it, hummingbird feeders are the very definition of an attractive nuisance — a source of free sugar water for any insect, bird or mammal that can find its way to the feeder.
That means not just ants and bees and downy woodpeckers but such freeloaders as squirrels, Baltimore orioles, house finches and (in Arizona) even bats. If white-tailed deer figured out a way to mooch the sugar water, you can bet they’d be there, too.
As a birder in Oakland reports: “I have had a downy at my feeder all summer, and now the red-bellied is there as well. The little hummer has to wait his turn.”
Concerned that the interlopers are drinking too much of the sugar water and your neighborhood hummingbirds aren’t getting their fair share? Tired of refilling your hummingbird feeder all the time? Here’s some advice.
The secret to success with feeders of any kind often involves design, and it turns out that hummingbird feeders come in all sorts of nifty shapes and sizes to ward off unwanted spongers.
For example, if ants are a problem, you can buy feeders with little moats. (Last time I checked, ants were lousy swimmers.)
If other mooching birds are a problem, you can buy a hummingbird feeder without any perches. These feeders look pretty cool, like large Christmas ornaments.
As for bees, I am told you should avoid feeders with those little yellow-flower accents. (I once had a feeder like that, but a bunch of rowdy squirrels deflowered it.) It seems that red attracts hummingbirds, but the fake yellow flowers draw wasps and bees.
Other birders have reported that squirrels are raiding their hummer feeders as well. That raises the question: How do you keep squirrels away from hummingbird feeders?
The answer is the same for all feeders: Make the feeder harder to get to (think “baffles”), and then pray a lot. I have found that like telemarketers, squirrels are nearly impossible to get rid of, no matter how hard you try.
Tiny tasers, anyone? (For the telemarketers, of course. You didn’t think I’d … )
About Pigeon Patrol:
Pigeon Patrol Products & Services is the leading manufacturer and distributor of bird deterrent (control) products in Canada. Pigeon Patrol products have solved pest bird problems in industrial, commercial, and residential settings since 2000, by using safe and humane bird deterrents with only bird and animal friendly solutions. At Pigeon Patrol, we manufacture and offer a variety of bird deterrents, ranging from Ultra-flex Bird Spikes with UV protection, Bird Netting, 4-S Gel and the best Ultrasonic and audible sound devices on the market today.
Voted Best Canadian wholesaler for Bird Deterrent products four years in a row.
Contact Info: 1- 877– 4– NO-BIRD (www.pigeonpatrol.ca)
by Ryan Ponto | Jul 12, 2017 | Bird Netting
We have talked about the activities of nature’s little critters in the past, but it never ceases to amaze me as to what can happen in an instance.
Last week, while on vacation, I was sitting on the porch taking a break from some chores, and my wife was behind camp working in her flower garden.
Earlier, she had been filling the bird feeders and had taken a piece of suet, about half the size of a golf ball, and placed in on the ground while she refilled the cages.
Well, shortly following that, a chipmunk came out of his den, which he has many entrances to in the area, and began enjoying the morsel of suet. However, a nearby woodpecker decided that it was his, and began pecking at the chipmunk’s head. The chipmunk was undeterred by all of this and continued to eat the suet, despite taking quite a beating from the woodpecker.
Meanwhile, two mourning doves landed nearby, and decided to get in on the action. They began to approach the other two combatants, sneaking in from behind the woodpecker. At that point, I thought to myself, “this will be interesting.” Unfortunately, my wife was not aware this was going on and came around from behind the camp and began to say something to me. At that point, the confrontation broke up. The chipmunk scooted off to his den, and the three birds flew off in their own directions. We’ll never know how that would have turned out.
Later, that evening, I noticed the chunk of suet was no longer on the ground, so one of them won out on that fight.
But that was nothing compared to what we witnessed on Saturday. It was a beautiful day, and we were out on the lake to take in some fishing. There was a bass tournament going on that day, so many boats and anglers were in the area. At one point, we saw a small bass, about 12-inches in length, floating in the water, obviously dead. We left it, citing that the circle of life would come into play, and some bird of prey, an osprey, bald eagle, or even a sea gull would come along and scavenge that up.
One of the things we did notice in the almost three hours we were fishing was that there were no birds present in the crystal blue sky. Usually, they are all around us.
Finally, at one point, we heard the call of a bald eagle, although we could not see it. I summized it was perched in a nearby tree and possibly warning us not to approach the dead fish, which it possibly had its eyes on for lunch.
The fish was floating approximately 15 yards away from our boat when a bald eagle came swooping down from a nearby tree and flew parallel to the water – maybe five feet from the water level – for about 20 feet, extended its talons, picked that fish right from the surface of the water, and proceeded, at the same altitude, down the shoreline and disappeared around a bend into a cove.
I have seen bald eagles scoop up fish from the lake before, but not from that close a distance. It goes without saying the scene was spectacular. Bald eagles are massive birds.
Even when you think you have seen all Mother Nature has to offer, something like this comes along.
About Pigeon Patrol:
Pigeon Patrol Products & Services is the leading manufacturer and distributor of bird deterrent (control) products in Canada. Pigeon Patrol products have solved pest bird problems in industrial, commercial, and residential settings since 2000, by using safe and humane bird deterrents with only bird and animal friendly solutions. At Pigeon Patrol, we manufacture and offer a variety of bird deterrents, ranging from Ultra-flex Bird Spikes with UV protection, Bird Netting, 4-S Gel and the best Ultrasonic and audible sound devices on the market today.
Voted Best Canadian wholesaler for Bird Deterrent products four years in a row.
Contact Info: 1- 877– 4– NO-BIRD (www.pigeonpatrol.ca)
