Michael Keys, a field biologist for the US Fish & Wildlife Service, Dept. of Interior, replaces an endangered baby Red-Cockaded Woodpecker back into it's nest. Keys had removed the baby earlier 25 feet above the ground from the nest in a sap covered pine tree to band it. Several bands of different colors were put on the baby's leg to identify the family, location, and banding agency. This mating pair only had one baby for this year Keys said. Keys was working nests in the St. Marks...
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Michael Keys, a field biologist for the US Fish & Wildlife Service, Dept. of Interior, replaces an endangered baby Red-Cockaded Woodpecker back into it's nest. Keys had removed the baby earlier 25 feet above the ground from the nest in a sap covered pine tree to band it. Several bands of different colors were put on the baby's leg to identify the family, location, and banding agency. This mating pair only had one baby for this year Keys said. Keys was working nests in the St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge and hopes to band about 16 chicks from that area this year. "It's all very hands on and monitoring intensive to collect, band and gather information", said Keys about keeping up with the chicks through adulthood. The habitat of the longleaf pines where the birds live is down to about 2% and the endangered birds are down to 1-2% of the pre-colonial population. While Florida has the greatest population of the birds in the southeastern states, Keys explained that there were only about 600 clusters , or families, in the Greater Apalachicola Population. Nationally only 9-10,000 Red-Cockaded Woodpeckers survive in the world..Oh, all the sap on the tree is caused by damage inflicted by the adults in order to get the tree to produce mounds of the sticky substance to keep snakes and other predatory away from their young.
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Copyright ©2001 Mark Wallheiser