Red-cockaded Woodpeckers at Disney wildlife preserve

From The Ledger in Florida:

If you are ever asked how to put a red-cockaded woodpecker to bed, the answer is beak-first.

Friday evening, biologist Monica Folk worked her way up the trunk of a longleaf pine. A strap connected to a box containing a red-cockaded woodpecker was slung over her shoulder.

I helped carry some of the gear through restored open pinewoods at Disney Wilderness Preserve, a 12,000-acre nature preserve stretching from Lake Russell to Lake Hatchineha at the edge of Poinciana.

She opened the box and then opened a bag inside the box that held the bird. She reached in and gently put the bird inside the tree cavity.

Once the bird is tucked inside the hole in the tree, a wire mesh cover is secured over the hole to keep the bird there until morning.

The hole, by the way, is an artificial nest cavity. This is a technique that was developed in the 1990s to provide an instant nesting and roosting site for newly introduced birds.

In the morning the barrier will be yanked off with a string attached to it and the bird will get its first look at its new home.

Last year I was one of the designated string yankers.

Red-cockaded woodpeckers are not a common sight in this part of Florida.

There's a small colony at the Avon Park Air Force Range, but encountering a red-cockaded woodpecker in the wild is often a matter of chance unless you spot them coming and going from their nest trees, which are usually marked with a band of white paint.

I encountered one out feeding at Ocala National Forest once, and it was such a surprise, I stopped for a while to savor the moment.

Prairie-Chickens as the new cash cow?

A New York Times article today focuses on the reappearance of "prairie chickens" in Eagleville, Mo. -- north of Kansas City and almost on the Iowa border. Once plentiful in Missouri but now threatened, the Greater Prairie-Chickens lure birders, ornithologists and photographers to a blind on Dunn Ranch, owned by The Nature Conservancy.

Tourism, which had been practically unheard of here, is now a hot topic. A bed and breakfast is about to open and the few remaining old businesses are feeling the pulse of new life for the first time in decades.

“You can see things in pictures, it’s just not the same,” said Jennifer McComb, an antiques dealer from St. Louis, during a recent viewing. “I cried. It’s the whole prairie thing, and the fact that they’re on the edge of not being. There are birds that I would have died to have seen that are long gone. These, they might not make it. They’re tricky. They’re weird. They’re special.”

They’re tricky. They’re weird. They’re special. That applies to many species, doesn't it?

Details about Dunn Ranch appear here.

Seabird progress in Hawaii

A nature preserve on the island of Molokai in Hawaii now hosts a Wedge-tailed Shearwater colony.

For the first time in decades, wedge-tailed shearwaters are establishing a new colony on Molokai at The Nature Conservancy's Mo‘omomi preserve.

The shearwaters' return, says state wildlife biologist Fern Duvall, is due to the Conservancy's weed and predator control efforts, which are creating a hospitable refuge where the birds can now safely nest and rear their young.

“They're definitely increasing, no doubt about it,” said Ed Misaki, director of the Conservancy's Molokai program. “Back in 1999 when the birds first started arriving, there were three nests. This year we counted 307 active nests.”

Wedge-tailed shearwaters — or ‘ua‘u kani — are large, dark-brown migratory birds with a black-tipped dark-gray bill. The birds live all their lives at sea and come ashore only to breed. Returning to the same nest site each year, wedge-tails nest in shallow sand burrows, one to two meters in length.

Read the entire article (link above) for great details about these seabirds. Here are details about Mo'omomi Preserve.

Photo courtesy of The Molokai Times