Making a home that Woody and his friends would love

Researchers are working to come up with a profile of the perfect home for redheaded woodpeckers. Helping woodpeckers means helping other creatures, as well.

By STEPHANIE HEMPHILL, Minnesota Public Radio

Last update: August 2, 2008 - 7:22 PM

BETHEL, MINN. - The Cedar Creek Ecosystem Science Reserve, run by the University of Minnesota, is a perfect place for redheaded woodpeckers.

You can't miss them: They're 7 to 9 inches long, with crimson heads, snowy white breasts and long beaks. And there are about 50 of them in this 500-acre patch of ground.

If researchers can figure out exactly what the woodpeckers like so much about this place, maybe they can come close to reproducing the conditions elsewhere.

Birder Lance Nelson first visited the Cedar Creek Reserve about a year ago.

"Somebody told me that there were redheaded woodpeckers up here, so I came, walked five minutes, and there was a redheaded woodpecker," he said. "And it flew into a hole in a tree and I said, 'Wow, this is easy.'"

He came again this summer and found eight nests.

"The young make a lot of chattering, so you can usually tell where the nest is," Nelson said.

Chet Meyers retired as a professor at Metropolitan State University last year, and now he's in charge of an effort to make more places where redheaded woodpeckers can build their nests and raise their young.

Meyers is marking every tree where the woodpeckers have chosen to nest. He points out a cavity he noticed last time he was here.

"See these two trees to the left? Go to the right-most one, it forks, and there's a broken-off snag up there, looks like a 'Y.' That's where the babies were sticking their head out a couple weeks ago. It was really cute."

Once the trees are marked, the group will catalog exact descriptions of each tree, in the hope of coming up with a profile of the perfect home for redheaded woodpeckers.

"We're going to measure the diameter of the tree, how high the nest cavity is, the species of the tree; is it alive or is it dead, so we can get some data on what seems to be the preferred habitat," Meyers said.

Then they'll reach out to landowners around the state to try to get them to leave standing dead and dying trees.

For people who worry that the tree will fall and damage something, Meyers said you can cut off the top and some of the bigger branches. The birds will be just as happy.

This could work on abandoned farms, where trees and grasses coexist. Or in cemeteries. Or around golf courses.

"If our theory -- see, this is all theory -- if our theory is correct, the golf course replicates an oak savannah and there should be birds there," Meyers said. "So, that's what we're hoping."

In fact, golf courses do tend to have redheaded woodpeckers. At the golf course at Ruttgers Bay Lake Lodge near Deerwood, several pairs are nesting in dead pines on the edge of the woods.

Meyers said helping woodpeckers means helping other creatures, too.

"The woodpecker is called a primary nester. It digs the cavity. But flying squirrels, mice, snakes, bluebirds, tree swallows -- there are lots of other animals that are secondary nesters."

"They can't drill the hole. But they live there. So what we're trying to do is preserve the habitat so the woodpeckers drill the hole and when they leave, something else will come in and live in it."

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