April 29, 2005

Column: Take It Outside

Make feathered friends at May's Spring Wings
Author: Joe Miller; Staff Writer
Section: What's Up
Page: WUP34

COLUMBIA --The more you learn about birds, the more you realize they aren't that different from us.

Such sociological insights are what make birding events like Spring Wings Over Water so irresistible.

Take the red-cockaded woodpecker. Once the nestling females fledge -- or spread their tiny wings and fly away, as Anne Murray once put it -- they're gone. They go off in search of a mate and start a family.

The males? They tend to stick around the cavity, or homestead, if you will. They aren't necessarily freeloaders; they earn the title "helper males" by helping to feed the next round of nestlings that come along. It's just that faced with the prospect of pecking out a pad of their own -- which can take 6 to 9 years -- well, what's the rush? Especially considering their life span is only 5 to 8 years.

The male purple martins aren't much better. After mating, they stick around until the eggs hatch. Then, once the nest is full of squawking chicks, the males stay out all night on a roost, returning with dawn's early light.

Offspring that refuse to let their parents become empty-nesters. Dads that stay out all night. Sounds familiar, yes?

If it also sounds intriguing, consider feeding your curiosity at Spring Wings. It's a scaled-back version of fall's Wings Over Water, a weeklong salute to Outer Banks-area wildlife that's in its ninth year. Like its fall counterpart, Spring Wings will specialize in birding trips, where guides share assorted insights into the avian lifestyle. Several guided paddle tours and assorted other nature tours also will be offered.

Two featured species at Spring Wings, which runs May 12-15, are the purple martin and red-cockaded woodpecker.

Our favorite martins

Of the nearly 400 bird species that have been spotted on the Outer Banks, the majority are part-time residents. The purple martin, for instance, spends its winters in Brazil (often living at oil refineries), before journeying north for the start of our spring. Wildlife biologists Alisa Esposito and husband Chris Lucash have been hosting purple martins at their home south of Columbia, in Tyrell County, since 1999 (they had more than 500 by the end of last season).

This year's first batch arrived on March 22 and will leave for Brazil in August. In the meantime, it's one busy schedule -- both for the birds and Esposito.

As Esposito does her periodic checks of the 77 purple martin apartments on her family's farmette off N.C. 94, she can tell that eggs are only a week or so away.

Once the eggs hatch, the men-folk head to the roost, in this case on Mann's Harbor bridge some 40 miles east. Every evening they leave; every morning they return. Once the little ones fledge and gain strength, mom and the kids start making the trip as well. It's an ideal training run for their upcoming 4,600-mile flight to Brazil. During the peak roost, beginning in mid-July, an estimated 100,000 purple martins occupy the framework of the 2 1/2-mile-long Mann's Harbor Bridge. The flock is so large that when they break camp in the morning, the exodus shows up as an expanding donut on Doppler radar.

Tracking the RCW

The red-cockaded woodpecker is likewise notable for its numbers -- its alarmingly small numbers.

Prior to European colonization, the RCW, as it's known in birding circles, flourished as did its favorite habitat, the longleaf pine savannah. At one point, an estimated 92 million acres of longleaf pine forest -- notable for its relatively barren, dry understory as well as its namesake pine -- could be found from Pennsylvania south and west to Texas. Today, 3 million acres remain.

Likewise, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service says the red-cockaded woodpecker population has declined an estimated 99 percent since pre-colonial times. Currently, their population is estimated at about 12,500. In 1970, the bird earned the dubious distinction of being declared endangered.

Curiously, the birds are being discovered in habitats once thought to be outside their domain.

The 10,000-acre Palmetto-Peartree Preserve, which officially opened to the public last weekend 10 miles northeast of Columbia, is dominated by pond and loblolly pines, has a fair number of hardwood trees and, in most places, a thick understory. Its soil is mostly saturated, a kind of upland swamp called a pocosin. And yet it was designated a preserve for its red-cockaded woodpecker population.

"We've got 29 active clusters and 26 breeding pairs," says Ryan Speckman. A 2000 N.C. State grad, Speckman is lead biologist at the site for J.H. Carter & Associates, a Southern Pines environmental consulting firm that manages the preserve for The Conservation Fund, which owns it.

Clusters are collections of trees in which a group of woodpeckers live. The size of a cluster varies, Speckman says, depending on the habitat. Though they average about 10 acres, the clusters here are just one or two acres and contain about four cavity trees -- the ones in which the woodpeckers have drilled holes and set up a nest.

One morning last week, we checked out a cluster just off the preserve's main hiking trail.

"Look for a bright white section," Speckman advised, as I scanned a pine tree. Sure enough, 35 or 40 feet up was a sizeable band that had been pecked clean, sap dripping down the trunk to discourage snakes, raccoons and other predators from slithering or shimmying up. The cavity entrance, like most here, faced west, away from the prevailing winds.

Alas, it was late morning and most of the woodpeckers were out and about. The males head out early to forage and return around sunset. If the females are sitting on eggs, they'll sit tight during the day. When the male returns, he'll sit on the eggs while the female goes out to eat.

One thing not to look for on a red-cockaded woodpecker: the color red. The 7-inch-high birds are most notable, says Speckman, for the alternating black and white stripes on their back and their distinctive white cheeks. Their eponymous feature, says Speckman, only flashes when the birds are irritated.

Of hardwoods and tract housing

A parting anthropomorphism: Both birds -- the red cockaded woodpeckers and the purple martins -- are picky homeonwers.

As noted, the red-cockadeds favor longleafs, though a pond or loblolly pine will do. However, says Speckman, they always favor "old growth" trees. (Almost has that snooty, inside-the-Beltline, hardwoods-and-9-foot-ceilings ring to it.)

Purple martins, on the other hand, are into manufactured housing.

"Purple martins are the only bird that rely exclusively on humans for housing," says Esposito.

As best we know, the first Americans began the practice, hollowing out gourds as homes for the birds. Why?

"They get noisy when there's an intruder," Esposito says. Maybe, she speculates, they served as good alarms. Maybe, too, they were used to keep down insect populations. (Though Esposito is compelled to dispel a popular purple martin myth: "They don't eat as many mosquitoes as people think." In fact, she adds, they eat dragonflies, which do eat mosquitoes.)

Purple Martins prefer white homes (they're cooler) and they like their privacy. One of Esposito's apartment-house style birdhouses has little, divided patios for each compartment.

"Otherwise," says Esposito, "the males feel compelled to defend the adjoining compartments."

When they aren't out roosting with the guys.

More online

- Red-cockaded woodpecker:   www.fws.gov/rcwrecovery/rcw.htm .

- Palmetto-Peartree Preserve:   www.palmettopeartree.org .

- Purple martin:   www.purplemartin.org ,   www.purplemartinroost.com .

Copyright 2005 by The News & Observer Pub. Co.
Record Number: ifp80a89