WNC’s own woodpecker quest

It’s not extinct and it’s not an ivory-billed. It is, however, on Audubon’s species of special concern list and it is listed as threatened by several northeastern states and it is much rarer throughout the Southern Appalachians and Western North Carolina than it once was.

The red-headed woodpecker has suffered a population decline of 50 percent since the mid 1960s. Records from the Smoky Mountains around the turn of the 20th century list the red-headed woodpecker as a fairly common nester at lower elevations. I don’t know of any current nesting records in the mountains of Western North Carolina.

The red-headed woodpecker was probably the dominant woodpecker of my youth. When I was a kid growing up in the tiny farm hamlet of Mer Rouge, La., 100-year-old water oaks and large pecan trees were commonplace. It must have been great red-headed woodpecker habitat. I can’t remember a time, as a kid, when they weren’t in my yard.

I got to the mountains of WNC in 1986 when I moved to Highlands from Hilton Head Island, S.C. Between 1986 and 2004 I saw exactly one red-headed woodpecker. That was a migrant juvenile at Licklog Gap on the Blue Ridge Parkway back around 1996.

Naturalist’s Corner readers may remember me writing about something of a red-headed woodpecker phenomenon last fall. The birds began to pour through the mountains. More than 100 red-headed woodpeckers were recorded at Caesar’s Head State Park last year during the park’s annual hawk watch. Caesar’s Head is located on U.S. 276 in South Carolina, just south of Brevard, NC.

There were almost daily sightings of migrant red-headed woodpeckers across the state last fall, as reported on Carolina Birds listserv. And, lo and behold, I added my second North Carolina red-headed woodpecker last October during a fall migration survey at Balsam Mountain Preserve. The bird showed up again this spring on the Carolina Birds listserv — not as common as last fall but still more frequently than normal.

The bird was a no-show at Balsam Mountain Preserve during this year’s spring migrant survey. Then on May 26 as I was beginning Balsam Mountain’s breeding bird survey I bumped into an adult red-headed woodpecker.

I had taken an ATV that morning to get to some of the more remote survey points. After surveying a couple of points I came out of the woods onto a rather new graveled road. Not exactly sure where I was, I began following the road in the direction I thought would lead me to one of the more prominent roads in the preserve. I rounded a curve and there on my right flying about 10 feet off the ground was a red-headed woodpecker. The bird stopped and I stopped just behind it. I watched it for four or five minutes as it foraged around, then it flew on down the mountain.

I had my GPS with be so I recorded the coordinates. I have been back to the site twice since and seen no sign of the bird.

I have sent to Cornell requesting a blurry woodpecker tape for my camcorder just in case the bird returns – OK! OK! – just kidding. But I do hope to spend some time looking for the bird. The time frame is sure right for a nesting bird.

(Don Hendershot can be reached at ddihen@earthlink.net)