[SOUND OF WIND SOWING, TRAFFIC, BIRDS]
Andy Wood: We’re going to be looking for one of the rarest animals in this region – the red-cockaded woodpecker, which is an, I think enigmatic might be the right word…
[MUSIC]
Rachel Lewis Hilburn: That’s Andy Wood, Director of Coastal Plain Conservation Group, and I’m RLH. And you are In The Wild Coastal Plain.
As southeastern North Carolina’s population swells, natural areas that make this a biodiversity hotspot are disappearing. In each episode, we’ll meet a species endemic to this hotspot – a plant or an animal – sometimes both – as in this episode. All so we can better understand where we live and who lives here with us.
Andy Wood: We’re heading into Holly Shelter Game Land, which is a state-owned and managed public trust resource located in Pender County and it is roughly 70,000 acres plus or minus. There’s a couple of different merged game lands – might be closer to 80,000.
One of the last, best pieces of this eco-region’s natural heritage in terms of its size, especially. This is a big chunk of land.
RLH: We’re looking for the red-cockaded woodpecker in Holly Shelter because of the longleaf pine savannas. These two species, the bird and the tree, have their fates intertwined.
Two members of a biodiversity hotspot in North Carolina’s coastal plain ecosystem –
And let’s make this clear right up front: yes, they’re called red-cockaded woodpeckers. But --
AW: Red cockaded woodpeckers don’t reveal red.
The male has a little, match-head size patch of red on each side of its head, but otherwise you’re not going to see red on a red-cockaded woodpecker.
That name has its connections back to the Revolutionary War when military officers wore a colored feather in their hat to denote their rank -- Yankee Doodle went to town, riding on a pony, stuck a colored feather in his hat and called himself a general.
RLH: I thought he called the feather macaroni – but Andy’s the guide.
AW: Or something like that.
[YANKEE DOODLE WENT TO TOWN]
So the red-cockaded woodpecker has a little red patch that is covered by black feathers. And when the bird’s upset, it will lift those black feathers, revealing that red patch, which is called a cockade, and the feather in Yankee Doodle’s hat is called a cockade.
During battle, they would cover that or remove that colored feather so the enemy didn’t know that they were an officer.
I get calls with some frequency: I think there’s a red-cockaded woodpecker in my yard!
And my first question is, do you see red?
Yes! Its whole head is red!
Ah, that might be a red-headed woodpecker, might be a pileated, might be a hairy, downy, red-bellied, any number of – even yellow-bellied sapsuckers. They could be any number of woodpeckers, but if you see red on the woodpecker’s head, it is unlikely to be a red-cockaded woodpecker.
RLH: Got it. So remind me again why Holly Shelter is so important to this not-red-headed red-cockaded rare bird?
AW: The reason holly shelter is so important to that endangered species, and it is a federally-endangered species, is, as you can see, we’re entering a longleaf pine savanna habitat.
RLH: Longleaf pines are the favorite tree of red-cockaded woodpeckers. And the state tree of North Carolina.
[LONGLEAF PINE SONG UP]
AW: [reciting] Here’s to the land of the longleaf pine, summer land where the sun doth shine – all that…
RLH: Andy’s quite musical today. Maybe it’s the bird song?
AW: Underneath these longleaf pine are clumps of wiregrass mixed in with creeping blueberry, lionia, leucothoe, you can see some roadside weedy dewberry – roadside blackberry.
In the savanna itself that we’re traveling through, we could probably count upwards of 60-80 different species of plants, but in some parts of Holly Shelter you can throw a hula hoop on the ground and count upwards of dozens of different species of plants within that hula hoop’s perimeter. That's how biodiverse Holly Shelter is.
And as I mentioned it’s owned and managed by the Wildlife Resources Commission, and so state employees with the WRC manage this property. And much of their work centers on managing property for the red-cockaded woodpecker – for other reasons as well, wildfire protection reduction. There’s a native azalea..
RLH: That’s how it is with Andy in the wild coastal plain. While he explains one element, he’s always scanning the landscape, even the smallest species catch his eye. Yes, native azaleas are quite different from the ones you see throughout Wilmington’s residential areas; the same ones that are celebrated during the annual Azalea Festival. But that’s for another episode.
RLH: Why are RCWs endangered? What happened to them?
AW: Why are they endangered? Because at one time we had 93 million acres of longleaf pine and habitat from North Carolina to east Texas and southern Illinois that’s now about 3 million acres.
Everything associated with longleaf pine is as imperiled.
RLH: You might have heard the traffic sounds underneath us. Andy wants to go further into Holly Shelter – farther away from the manmade sounds so we can hear the wind sowing through the trees. And the birds, he says, also need more quiet to communicate.
AW: Birds communicate by sound – a lot of their communication is visual, feathers and displays. But sound, their calls are really, really important, and so when you hear all of that traffic noise, it should be very, very quiet out here. All we should hear is wind sowing through trees and yet we’re hearing all of that noise. So all the birds that live in this area have to raise their voices to be heard over our din. Even noise pollution is an issue.
RLH: So we drive along a gravel road.
[SOUNDS OF TRUCK DRIVING ON THE GRAVEL ROAD]
AW: You can see the white bands on those trees, and if you look about eight feet above that band, that pair of white bands, you see a hole in the tree. That was created by a male RCW. That’s a cavity tree and you see other trees in this area with that pair of white bands. Those white bands denote cavity trees that belong to a RCW.
RLH: How do you know it’s a male that made the hole?
AW: The male does most of the excavating to create cavities for himself, his spouse, and their hoped-for offspring.
How they paint the white bands on the tree we don’t yet know…
Laughter
RLH: It was just for a second, maybe two.
The white bands are there so the WRC staff know these are the significant trees in this patch of habitat – the ones hosting red-cockaded woodpeckers.
AW: And when they do conduct a prescribed burn in here, they’ll first go in and cut down, they’ll mow down the grasses and any shrubs that might be -- it’s mostly grasses, wiregrass, around the base of the tree to reduce the risk of fire touching the tree.
RLH: If you’ve spent any time in southeastern North Carolina, you’ve probably heard about prescribed burns. But do you understand why these burns – controlled and planned forest fires conducted by humans – what they actually do and why they’re important?
AW: When fire comes through, it scorches, may not kill the branch but it scorches it enough to stimulate the tree to just let that branch die. So you see – no lower branches. But if fire is kept away from these trees, they may retain some lower branches but for the most part, they drop ‘em in an area that gets periodically burned.
RLH: So these low-intensity fires allow the pine cones to drop their seed – and grow more longleaf pines.
In the Holly Shelter Game Land, where Andy Wood and I are on this April day, he’s pointing out longleafs in the grass stage. If you didn’t know, you might just think they were a tuft of long, bright green grass. But if you look down into the middle of the plant–
AW: You’ll see a little tuft of the apical meristem – the growing tip of the tree – and if we find a slightly older one, you’ll get a better look at that growing tip.
This plant is one year older than that one – it’s about five years old –
RLH: How do you know that?
AW: Because it’s in the grass stage for typically 5-7 years. In that time, it’s drilling a taproot in the ground. This is very sandy soil – it’s pure sand. This is all a former sand dune habitat, so if we were here thousands of years ago these would be rolling sand dunes. Much like what you see in the sand hills, closer to the piedmont, Fayetteville area.
These are weathered and low but it is sandy soil, well-drained and that means these trees have to drill a taproot like a carrot to get to moisture. So for five years, roughly, it’s in that stage, and then with all of those needles around the growing tip of the plant, they act as a buffer against fire. So when fire comes through here, this whole area will burn in a couple of hours.
The fire comes through here as contradictory as this sounds – we would call it a cool fire – because it sweeps through quickly, burns away inkberry, it’ll toast all of these azaleas, burn off the needles around the longleaf pine.
RLH: But not the tip. And since fire actually promotes the growth of native grasses and wildflowers, as well, what the Wildlife Resources Commission calls a grassy understory – the longleaf pine savanna then becomes an important habitat for other species such as Bachman’s sparrow and bobwhite quail.
After the fire stimulates all this growth, managing the forest might involve thinning out some of the newer trees so longleafs aren’t trying to outcompete each other for nutrients.
Andy told us just a moment ago that longleaf pines will spend five to seven years in the grass stage. They are very slow-growing trees.
AW: The reason it takes so long is llp is a very dense wood and if you look at this tree stump that’s been cut, you can see how close the rings are. This is almost rock-hard. It’s as hard as oak.
RLH: By the time they're a suitable nesting habitat for the red-cockaded woodpecker, they’re pretty old trees.
AW: So the male woodpecker finds a habitat here and determines that, okay, there’s no other birds like me in this immediate area. It needs a territory of, depending on the quality of the trees, 80-200 acres or so for a territory. They’re a non-migratory bird. This is their territory. We are standing in somebody’s property. The bird’s property.
RLH: You understand this now -- the red-cockaded woodpecker is endangered because the great longleaf pine savannas are disappearing. There are fewer places with that many connected acres.
What’s left? In New Hanover County, Carolina Beach State Park, Long Leaf Park, Halyburton, and the campus of the University of North Carolina Wilmington.
Of course in Pender County, which is seeing its own explosive growth, Holly Shelter – not including adjacent game lands, boasts 63,520 acres.
But back to our red-cockaded woodpecker. He’s hoping to start a family, so he’s looking for a longleaf pine habitat that could be home.
AW: The woodpecker will identify a tree it thinks will make a good cavity, and begin by landing on the tree and flaking off the very outer bark on the tree and in the process, you see underneath the gray weathered bark, it’s bright red or brick red – so the woodpecker will flake away much of this outer bark, smoothing the tree.
And I’m talking about paper thin pieces of bark. It’s not going in and excavating all the bark off like a lathe – taking off the outer easy stuff – stuff that you can flake off with a fingernail.
The next step is to drill a hole through the bark called a sap well, and it’s about an inch, 2 inches in diameter – it starts to weep sap. The Tar Heel term is a reference to sap that was derived from longleaf pine.
RLH: What do they sound like?
AW: They have the sweetest little chattering call and they communicate with each other all day long. It’s not a song like you would hear from a typical song bird. And it’s not lilting. It’s a high-pitched chattering.
To me, it sounds like, hey what are you doing? Oh, I’m over here. What are you doing? Well, I’m over here. What are you doing? Well, I’m still over here. Well, did you find anything? Not yet.
[RCW CALLS HERE]
So they’re just bantering back and forth and that banter probably reinforces the pair bond and the family unit because they do live as a family unit.
They’re what we call communal breeders. Unlike most birds, they provide extensive parental care for a long period of time for their offspring.
The male scrapes off that thin outer bark, drills the sap wells. So he’s addressed recently because trees are now sending sap up to the top because we’re in spring. So the trees are weeping.
That sap coats the outer part of the tree like a candle – almost like candle wax.
RLH: It’s why they have to nest in living longleaf pine, says Andy. Because dead ones don’t weep sap.
AW: That smoothness and presence of sap on the tree, we assume it helps deter predators like snakes, raccoons.
If you hugged that tree you would never get it off your clothing. That little bit of black right there –
RLH: Andy is pointing to what looks like dirt on his own hand.
AW: That’s from last week. It doesn’t come off.
It’s a great strategy but it’s labor intensive. It excavates the cavity once the sap wells have coated the tree.
So he excavates so rain won’t flow into the cavity – he then goes downward to create a nest cavity which looks like a stocking filled with seeds. Looks like a hollow gourd.
The male may have already attracted a mate – a female -- so he may be excavating the cavity for himself or working on two – one for himself and his mate. The whole process takes months to years.
That’s for just one pair of birds.
Then he goes to work on other cavities because each cavity is a bedroom for each bird.
RLH: They don’t usually roost together at night, says Andy. They can – but they seem to prefer separate sleeping quarters.
AW: Typically, the female has her cavity. He has his cavity and then there will be two or three more cavities or more than that to house their offspring.
RLH: In the same tree?
AW: No, in different trees.
RLH: In different trees?
AW: You see another white painted tree over there? Then two more, then another –
So right where we’re standing there’s one two three four five cavity trees, yeah, there’s six – this is the hub of this bird’s territory which may encompass 100-plus acres.
RLH: They are territorial birds.
AW: Like the beavers, they don’t play well with other families or other cavity-nesting birds like the bluebird.
As our son, Carson, describes it, the red-cockaded woodpecker is a fiefdom: you’ve got a king and queen and princes and princesses.
[RCW CHATTERING SOUND]
RLH: Hmmm… are they having conversations, too, about royal relevance?
North Carolina’s Wildlife Resources Commission conducts periodic surveys of Holly Shelter’s longleaf pines to find new cavities created by red cockaded woodpeckers. Andy says they want to document every tree that houses one of these birds.
AW: When they do these surveys, they come into suitable habitat – I’ve joined them multiple times – we spread out about a hundred feet apart and walk through these savannas looking at every tree – so every tree and there are thousands of trees in our eyesight right here – every tree in here has had our eyes on it looking for new cavities just to see what’s happening with these birds.
RLH: The woodpeckers will sometimes nest in pond pine and loblolly pine and Andy says there are rare examples of the birds nesting in a pond cypress but – longleaf pine is what they favor.
As if we need a reminder, we’re standing in the middle of a wild ecosystem. I’m asking Andy about what we lose if the longleaf pines and red-cockaded woodpeckers go extinct. But nature has other plans for us at the moment.
We are witnessing a territory argument.
AW: OOH, there’s an RCW. The bluebird just landed on the tree. Bluebirds are the enemy of RCW because they’ll try to take over a woodpecker’s cavity and use it. The RCW landed on the backside because it knows we’re here.
Solid white head –you see the bluebird chasing him off – it’s the most vicious animal in the bird kingdom.
RLH: The Wildlife Resources Commission agrees the open, parklike nature of red-cockaded woodpecker habitat also attracts eastern bluebirds, red-headed woodpeckers – a different bird from the red-cockaded, deer, and southeastern fox squirrels.
AW: Those two RCWs are paired. They’re together and they’re trying to shoo away the bluebird that is thinking about taking over that cavity.
RLH: So the million-dollar question: what happens if we lost the red-cockaded woodpecker? If it went extinct, what do we lose beyond fodder for birdwatchers? Of course, we can’t fully quantify the effects. Unintended consequences, unforeseeable outcomes make the question unanswerable. But there are elements to the answer that are new discoveries for scientists.
AW: The RCW helps introduce red heart disease to new trees which benefits itself.
RLH: Red heart disease is a fungal infection that softens the extraordinarily hard, dense wood of the longleaf pine – wood that is so dense, Andy says a nail will bend before going into the wood if you don’t drill a hole first. And while Andy also says the degree of softness is mostly undetectable to him, the birds know. Trees with red heart disease make cavity creation and the growth of the RCW fiefdom a little bit easier.
AW: But these cavities are beneficial to other animals
Sometimes the cavities get abandoned and they get used by other species of birds: great crested flycatcher, bluebird, brown-headed nuthatch, chickadees, so they’re creating homes for other animals.
RLH: We see in yet another way you can’t remove one species from the ecosystem without affecting the whole.
Remember Andy’s International Space Station analogy from episode 1?
AW: The way to think of species, in my mind, the way I think of species, is as rivets holding together the life support system that’s keeping us intact here on earth.
So, imagine the International Space Station and the astronauts that are up there, every day, they are looking at individual rivets and nuts and bolts that are holding together the space station and they understand and appreciate the value of each and every one of those rivets. And if one of them said, hey, you know, we don’t need this one here – really? You’re willing to lose that rivet in this space station?
And when you look at a plant or animal on earth, it is a rivet, holding together the life support system, you can call it an ecosystem, if you want, but the fact of the matter is, if we lose all of the plants – if we scraped earth clean down to just dirt and water, humans would be extinct.
We think we’re invincible. We’re not. We are wholly dependent on the pyramid of life, if you will, that is formed of plants and wildlife
AW: Another RCW just came in – we’re going to step away – they’ve flaked bark on my head.
RLH: They know we’re here, says Andy, and he laughs at himself. He, like any responsible environmentalist, doesn’t want to disturb the wildlife. The reality is the birds are absolutely aware of us.
AW: Chickadees have different vocalizations to describe different animals in the environment, so, for example, if there were chickadees around they might be calling with notes that tell other chickadees there’s humans in the field or there’s a snake on the ground or there’s a hawk. And we know that they are distinguishing different species. But what’s really cool is other species of birds are picking up on what the chickadees are saying, so when the chickadee says “snake” – the birds in the area, they don’t look up in the tree, they look down on the ground. When they say “cat”, they look all around to find that cat – it’s amazing.
The communication that goes on around us -- we think we’re something with the interweb – uh-uh. We got nothing on plants and wildlife. Even plants communicate with each other.
[HOLLY SHELTER SOUND]
CROSS FADE TO MUSIC
RLH: We need them to survive. Each species that goes extinct, according to Andy Wood and many other scientists, brings the human species one step closer to that same outcome.
AW: We do need to give serious thought to nature rights – we need to do that for our own sake.
When I talk environmentalism I’m talking humanism.
RLH: Thanks to our guide, Andy Wood of Coastal Plain Conservation Group. And thank you for joining us in The Wild Coastal Plain of SE NC – southeastern North Carolina.
