Woodsman, spare that tree!
Last week’s edition of The Pinnacle included a profile of
”
the birdman of Gilroy.
”
Norm Watenpaugh tends to roughly 100 bird boxes, checking them
faithfully and recording minute details of what happens within and
around them.
Woodsman, spare that tree!
Last week’s edition of The Pinnacle included a profile of “the birdman of Gilroy.”
Norm Watenpaugh tends to roughly 100 bird boxes, checking them faithfully and recording minute details of what happens within and around them.
There’s another approach all of us might take that involves, shall we say, considerably less input.
That’s just to leave a few dead snags located in spots that pose no threat to homes or other property in place.
A few years ago, David Suddjian of Capitola published a story under the title “A Tale of Ten Snags: A Forest Management Success Story.”
Suddjian monitored a 50-acre tract in the Soquel State Demonstration Forest that was harvested in 1995. The forest manager elected to create snags from 10 large Douglas-fir trees. The trees were killed by topping them at 65 to 80 feet and removing the live branches.
At first, the trees remained lifeless, a dramatic change from their state as living trees just a year before.
By 1998, half the trees were showing signs of beginning to decay.
Shelf fungus began to grow from them, but still no birds were evident.
In 2001, after just six years, all the trees were hosts to fungus, carpenter ants and wood-boring beetles. Also, all 10 trees had nest cavities, without the ministrations of Mr. Watenpaugh.
It took a while, but nature began taking care of itself – with a little initial assistance from the old chainsaw. Holes were drilled by woodpeckers, small creeping birds called pygmy nuthatches and the crow-sized pileated woodpecker had used most of the trees for foraging.
In all, six different species were nesting in the snags – acorn woodpeckers, hairy woodpeckers, pygmy nuthatches, western screech-owls, northern pygmy-owls and northern saw-whet owls. The owls obviously do not drill their own holes, but co-opt holes drilled earlier by woodpeckers.
Prior to the creation of the snags, there were only two naturally occurring large snags in the 5-acre study area. Bird populations rose dramatically as well.
Most of us have experienced the annoying tingle of a carpenter ant’s bite shortly after sitting on a downed log, and nearly everyone who walks in the woods encounters the occasional rotting log torn to pieces by bears and passing fishermen after the same thing – grubs.
The point is that a little decay can be a good thing. It makes the slothful act of ignoring a snag or two virtuous.
Flickers are some of our most common woodpeckers, medium-sized showy birds with wings that glow reddish-orange in flight (in some other areas, the flight feathers are yellow). They shun healthy wood, preferring to drill their nest cavities in the easy-to-carve punky wood of dead snags. Smart birds.
Flickers also depend heavily on a diet of carpenter ants, which depend heavily on – you guessed it – decaying wood.
Fire often leaves behind a host of snags, and in many of our coastal environments, opportunity for rejuvenation of decadent growth.
Jeff Poklen, an area nature photographer, posted a suggestion on an e-mail bulletin board this week that went so far as to suggest that birders try to talk firefighters into granting them access while mop-up operations are still underway. Fire exposes hitherto-concealed insects, and the birds follow the food before the smoke even clears.
One quite rare woodpecker in California, the black-backed, prefers to inhabit burned over areas.
For those of us who would prefer to leave the fires to the firefighters, the snags they leave behind can be a wildlife bonanza.
