When a research scientist friend of mine who works in the Pinelands
of southern New Jersey called me to inform me that he discovered
a tree cavity with a Red-headed woodpecker hanging around it every
morning for the past week and that the location was on the side
of a busy road I immediately became peaked.
This species is endangered in New Jersey and has become a symbol
of wildlife conservation in the state as testified by the license
plate plastered with its picture. Most of the tens of thousands
of people driving around with the red-headed picture on their license
plate have never caught a glimpse of this impressive animal. The
reason for this is two-fold – removal of old dead trees from forests
and agricultural areas and the invasion of its alien nemesis - the
European starling. The dead trees are used for making nesting cavities
and the cavities that do remain become occupied by the more aggressive
starlings.
This second point became clear to me as I watched the red head hanging
around by the tree hole it had claimed while actively dive bombing
a lone starling that was obviously vying for the same hollow. The
red headed woodpecker was winning the battle but whether or not
it will win the war is yet to be determined. I believe that if more
than one starling fights for this cavity that the odds will shift
in their favor. The fact that starlings have a much higher reproductive
success rate has turned the odds against our native red heads. The
red head I photographed here was early in its nesting cycle. As
the season wears on more and more starlings will be looking for
cavities to nest in. This will induce more and more conflicts between
the two species. My guess is that in the war of attrition the red-head
is engaged in will turn to the starlings advantage. This red-headed
woodpecker will have to go deeper and deeper into less desirable
habitat types to nest. That is why this was such a good photographic
opportunity. The tree that I was photographing the bird was right
along side a busy road in the Pine Barrens. I didn’t have to wade
through a muck-festering swamp, deep in the recesses of the Pines
to get a picture of the bird at a breeding site – indeed an added
bonus for any wildlife photographer. The only down side was that
some of the people driving by looking over at this figure of a person
draped in a standing photography blind would sometimes stop
and ask me what the heck I was looking at. Needless to say this
takes the wilderness experience right out of it.
If the locals weren’t enough of a nuisance the state police telling
me from their in car loud speaker to “please come out of the blind
slowly and step away from area”, certainly took the wild out of
the word wilderness. Apparently someone driving by thought I might
be a terrorist with a stinger missile launcher cradled inside my
blind waiting to shoot down a military airplane on final approach
to the nearby Fort Dix air field. I can understand this to some
degree, I was within ten miles of a military institution, my 500mm
lens mounted on a large tripod covered in a camouflage blind is
an intimidating sight and the fact that at the time of this writing
our country was at war all add up to the outside possibility of
foul play. You can never be “too careful” I guess was the mindset
of the person who called the police. The officer and I had a good
chuckle over it after I handed him my credentials and told him what
I was doing. He said to me after words, tongue-in-cheek, “you know
these Piney’s – they still believe in the Jersey Devil, Luke Sky
Walker, and that the internet must be some new-fangled device to
catch cat fish”.
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