A Northwoods Almanac for May 28 – June 10, 2021
Red-headed Woodpeckers!
In recent weeks, I’ve received four reports of red-headed woodpeckers appearing at people’s feeders. Gale Fisher and David Wenninger observed a red-headed woodpecker at their feeder in Hazelhurst and wrote, “First one we’ve seen in 7 or 8 years! He actually preferred the birdseed to the suet. A beautiful sight on a dreary morning.”
Greg Bassett in Hazelhurst had red-headed woodpeckers nesting on his property last year, and he was very pleased to report that they had returned. In fact, he said he had two pairs now, and there’s been “nothing but fighting since they got here. And they are not quiet fighters. Constant noise.”
Dan and Judy Lucas on Fence Lake observed a pair of red-headed woodpeckers on May 13, and JoAnn Zaumseil reported that one came to her suet feeder on Mother’s Day, 5/9, a first time sighting for her in Lac du Flambeau.
This is good news because red-headed woodpecker populations have declined in most regions that support the bird, and the species is now listed as Threatened in Canada and several U.S. states. Partners in Flight lists the red-headed woodpecker as a Yellow Watch List Species for the United States and Canada due to steep population declines and threats to its habitat – using Breeding Bird Survey data, the red-headed woodpecker population is estimated to have declined by 67% between 1970 and 2014.
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| red-headed woodpecker photo by Bev Engstrom |
Why the decline? Well, red-headed woodpeckers primarily nest in dead trees, or in dead portions of live trees, or occasionally in utility poles, and they predominate in open areas with little ground vegetation or in stands of trees with no understory. The removal of dead trees and branches in urban areas and the loss of nesting habitat to firewood cutting, clear-cutting, agricultural intensification, and channeling of rivers in rural areas has contributed to their decline. Add in the loss of small orchards, the loss of chestnuts, the decline of their favored oak-savanna habitat, fire suppression during the 20th century, and a switch to “cleaner” farming practices (removal of hedgerows for larger monoculture fields), and you have a species in trouble.
To make things worse, as with many cavity-nesting species, red-headed woodpeckers run into aggressive interactions with the non-native European starling. In a study in Ontario, almost half of nest failures were attributed to cavity takeover by starlings, and nests with starlings present were four times more likely to fail than nests without starlings in the area.
How to help them? Creation or maintenance of dead or dying snags, and retaining dead branches in trees should be of the most benefit to them. In fact, populations are increasing in areas in the eastern U.S. where high beaver populations have created flooded woods with abundant dead snags for nesting. Restoration of savannas using fire has also resulted in increased abundance of red-headed woodpeckers in Minnesota.
Besides being strikingly beautiful, they’re a fascinating bird! They are the best example of a sexually “monomorphic” woodpecker – adult males and females are indistinguishable in the field. They’re also highly omnivorous – their diet includes various seeds and nuts; crops such as corn, berries, and fruit; insects, bird eggs, nestlings, occasionally adult birds, and mice. They’ve even been observed placing pine cones and nuts on roads to be crushed by cars at Huntington Beach State Park, South Carolina. They are known to feed on sap oozing from sapsucker drill holes, and to come to bird feeders in the winter, particularly to suet. Plus, they’re the most expert flycatcher in the woodpecker family, sallying out from a tree to capture insects in the air.
They also are one of only four woodpeckers, out of the 198 woodpeckers in the world, that commonly store food, and the only woodpecker known to cover stored food with pieces of wood or bark. They cache insects (particularly grasshoppers), acorns, and beechnuts, breaking them to fit into cracks and crevices in posts, in cavities of partially decaying trees, or under patches of raised bark. They store nuts, corn and cherries in gate posts and railroad ties, even under shingles of houses. They’re known to hammer acorns into crevices so tightly that other animals like blue jays can’t steal them, and they regularly store grasshoppers alive, wedged into crevices so tightly that they, too, cannot escape.
Historically, red-headed woodpeckers were a popular target for sportsmen, although Audubon described their flesh in 1844 as tough and smelling “strongly of ants and other insects, making redheads scarcely eatable” – what a pity.
So, don’t eat them (it’s illegal to kill one anyway), and be thrilled if one or more show up in your yard - it’s a blessing.
Black Flies on Loons
Several people have written about the hordes of black flies mobbing the nesting loons on their lakes. Mary Adams-Pflieger wrote on 5/18, “Yesterday I was working out by my dock and the male loon had to check out what I was doing. He took a few dives from the middle of my lake and ended up about ten feet away from me. His head was covered with black flies – literally hundreds! He tried to rub them off the back of his head by rubbing it on his back. This was after swimming hundreds of yards under water! What a Hell to live through.”
Jeff Labudda in the Park Falls area wrote, “Yesterday, Sunday, May 16, I was fishing for crappies on a nearby lake. I watched as a Loon climbed onto her nest on a mound of matted, dead reeds. There was a very dense, almost opaque, cloud of swarming gnat-like insects all around the Loon. It was distressing to see. The bird’s head was covered by the insects. After just a minute, she fled the nest, repeatedly dunking her head to shed the insects.
“I watched for a long time; well over an hour. She didn’t return to the nest. The insect swarm remained over the nest in her absence. It would be unbearable for her. If a Loon chick managed to hatch with those flies present, the chick would die from the assault. I expect that nest, and presumably many others, will be abandoned this year. Hell of a life for the beautiful loons.”
The bad news is that the black flies can force very high percentages of nesting loons to abandon their nests – last year, Dr. Walter Piper reported nearly 80% of loons in his study area in Oneida County abandoned their nests.
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| photo from The Loon Project, Dr. Walter Piper |
The good news, however, is that these particular black flies (Simulidae annulus) are only really abundant for about three weeks. Once the female gets her blood meal, she lays her eggs and moves on, allowing the loons to make a second attempt at nesting, which is most often successful.
In his article “Common Loons respond adaptively to a black fly that reduces nesting success” (The Auk, 135(3): 788-797, 2018), Dr. Piper discusses how black flies, while quite bad, are not as bad as predators of loon eggs, like raccoons. He notes that the black flies are a temporary issue, whereas egg predators are always present. Loons commonly reuse the black-fly-impacted nest sites, apparently behaving as if they understand that the black flies are a short-term threat that will go away. Renesting occurs on average three weeks after the initial failure.
However, if an egg predator steals or eats the eggs, the male almost never reuses the nest sites and moves the nest to another location (if you aren’t aware, males, not the females, choose the nesting site). The male loon apparently understands the predator is an issue that likely won’t go away, so he abandons the site altogether, and renesting is significantly less likely to occur.
What I’d like to understand is if these black flies have dramatically increased in recent years, and if so, why? They sure seem to be more of an issue than they were a decade or more ago.
Sightings - Broad-winged Hawk, Indigo Bunting, Warblers, Saw-whet Owl, Gray Treefrogs, Spring Flowers
Greg Bassett took a photo in Hazelhurst of a broad-winged hawk that had a snake in its talons but had died very shortly thereafter when it was apparently hit by a vehicle. Greg noted, “My guess is it had swooped in on the snake warming on the blacktop. Unfortunately it looks like its timing couldn't have been worse and a car or truck came through at the same time.”
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| broad-winged hawk photo by Greg Bassett |
Broad-wingeds are called a “sentinel forager,” spending large proportions of their time sitting quietly, scanning for a wide variety of prey including amphibians, reptiles, insects, mammals, and juvenile birds. Small mammals (like chipmunks and shrews) and amphibians (like frogs and toads) constitute the most frequent prey and greatest biomass in most studies. Their propensity for amphibians likely explains why they are often seen near water and why they migrate in mid-September – amphibians and reptiles are usually going into hibernation by then, so they need to head south.
5/12: Toads began trilling in Manitowish.
5/12: Dan Carney reported his FOY palm warblers, black-and-white warblers, and Nashville warbler.
5/13: And the next day, Dan spotted a blackburnian warbler and American redstarts.
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| Blackburnian warbler photo by Bev Engstrom |
5/14: Joan Galloway on Clear Lake in Manitowish Waters reported her FOY male indigo bunting.
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| indigo bunting male photo by Bev Engstrom |
5/15: A saw-whet owl was calling near our home in Manitowish at 11 p.m. The incessant monotonous call goes on and on and on and . . . we loved hearing him.
5/22: Eastern gray treefrogs were calling for the first time in Manitowish. Bunchberries had just come into flower west of Park Falls, along with bluebead lily, blue cohosh, and bishop’s cap.
5/24: The Green-Up is in full swing with all our rain. Have you ever seen so many shades of green?
Celestial Events – Partial Solar Eclipse!
June 1 provides us with 15 hours and 30 minutes of daylight as we rapidly approach summer solstice. Enjoy these long days!
For planet watching in June, look after dusk for Venus very low in the northwest and for Mars a little higher in the northwest. Before dawn look for Jupiter in the southeast and Saturn in the south.
The new moon occurs on 6/10. There will be a partial solar eclipse that morning when the moon passes in front of the lower left rim of the sun. This partial eclipse begins at 3:56 a.m. before it’s light, so it won’t be visible until the sun rises at 5:08 a.m. (Minocqua times). The maximum eclipse occurs only four minutes later at 5:12, and it all ends by 5:46 – so be prepared to be up early and have an open northeast view of the sunrise!
Thought for the Week
“Rained gently last night, just enough to wash the town clean, and then today a clean crisp fat spring day, the air redolent, the kind of green minty succulent air you'd bottle if you could and snort greedily on bleak, wet January evenings when the streetlights hzzzt on at four in the afternoon and all existence seems hopeless and sad.” ― Mink River
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