birding

 The red headed woodpecker is one of my favorite birds. i used to see them often years ago, but now i have not seen one in years. When they say that a bird is on the decline I believe it. You don’t really notice things that go missing. Please help these birds.

This is from the Audubon Bird Watch List: 

Threats

At one time the Red-headed Woodpecker was targeted by sportsmen because of its brilliant red plumage, as an agricultural pest, and for damage to telephone poles. Its population has decreased as a result of food source losses, as evidenced by population declines in association with the decline of beech trees and the disappearance of Rocky Mountain grasshoppers. Collisions with automobiles were particularly common in the mid-1900s and the species is considered a rare victim of tower collisions. Nest failure occurs when nests are excavated in telephone poles recently (within 3-4 years) treated with creosote. Competition for nesting sites with European Starlings was thought to decrease reproductive success, but recent studies show that this may not be the case. The mere fact that starlings nest earlier than this woodpecker suggests that Red-heads may not be vulnerable to starling invasion. Habitat has been degraded by the harvesting of snags, clearcuts, agricultural development, channeling of rivers, regeneration of eastern forests, fire suppression, monoculture crops, and the loss of small orchards.

Conservation
The Red-headed Woodpecker is listed as a vulnerable species in Canada and is listed on multiple state threatened species lists in the United States. Habitat should be managed so as to provide large forest fragments (>2 ha) with large snags for nesting and open areas for catching flying insects. In addition, selective thinning has been shown to increase the likelihood of occurrence and nesting in Ohio. Controlled fires have negative and positive impacts. While they open up the forest (providing open space for fly catching) and create snags, they can also destroy existing snags used for nesting.

The Red-headed Woodpecker is listed as a priority species in Partners in Flight’s Bird Conservation Plan for the Upper Great Lakes Plain (http://www.partnersinflight.org). One of the objectives of this plan is to increase Red-headed Woodpeckers by 3% per year in USFWS Region 3 from 1980-2010 as measured by the Breeding Bird Survey.

What Can You Do?
Audubon’s Important Bird Area program is a vital tool for the conservation of Red-headed Woodpeckers as well as other species. To learn more about the Important Bird Area programs in New York and Colorado, and other states with breeding populations of Red-headed Woodpeckers, and how you can help, visit: http://www.audubon.org/bird/iba/

Volunteers are crucial to the success of programs that monitor the long-term status of wintering populations of Red-headed Woodpeckers and other bird species. Audubon’s Christmas Bird Count (CBC) is one of the longest-running citizen-science monitoring programs in the world and has helped to follow changes in the numbers and distribution of Red-headed Woodpecker.
Information on where Red-headed Woodpeckers occur and in what numbers is vital to conserving the species. Help in monitoring this and other species by reporting your sightings to eBird. A project of Audubon and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, eBird is the world’s first comprehensive on-line bird monitoring program.
The Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology and the USDA Forest Service coordinate Birds in Forested Landscapes, a citizen-science project that links volunteer birders and professional ornithologists in a study of the habitat requirements of North American forest birds, including Red-headed Woodpecker. To learn more about Birds in Forested Landscapes, and how you can participate in the project, visit: http://birds.cornell.edu/bfl/