Learning to be a Woodpecker

This is the first installment in a blog series chronicling my adventures in ornithology class.  I’ve anticipated taking this course ever since I first began attending Ohio University over 2 years ago.  As a Wildlife Biology and Conservation major, the famed “ologies,” ornithology, ichthyology, herpetology, mammalogy, and entomology (birds, fish, reptiles, amphibians, mammals, and insects respectively), are the basic tenets of any wildlife biologist.  It has been a long road to get here, but after countless hours in chemistry and physics labs, I finally get to leave the classroom and venture into the outdoors.  To become a biologist, you must get your hands dirty.

It is 7 am.  The sun has just begun to rise, and I can already tell the cool morning will not last long.  This September has been exceedingly hot, reaching the low 90s for days on end.  If it warms too quickly, the bird won't remain active.  Our small class of fledgling ornithologists files groggily into the bios vans.  I’ve spent a disproportionate amount of my undergraduate career in these two timeworn vehicles.  As I’ve mentioned before, I am prone to motion sickness, and it’s safe to say these relics are an unforgiving pair.  With a few morning donuts sitting heavily in our stomachs, we set off to Zaleski State Forest.

I’ve visited Zaleski (or Lake Hope as it is sometimes called) several times before.  It hosts a wide diversity of bird life as well as herpetofauna and a large (though secretive) population of bobcats.  We park the vans near the old brick furnace, grab binoculars, and step out into the morning air.  Our professor, Dr. Don Miles, immediately begins spouting out the names of birds.  “There go 2 mourning doves, brown thrasher in that tree, blue jays, downy woodpecker, northern cardinal.”  I consider myself a birder, but I’m always dumbfounded when ornithologists can spot and ID the tiniest of birds from within the dense tangles of underbrush.  I crane my neck, camera held aloft, trying to pick out some movement that might give the birds’ position away.  

A gray bird zips onto a branch above me and begins bobbing its tail—it’s an eastern phoebe.  We would see several more of these charismatic flycatchers during our hike.  They are one of the easier birds to identify simply because they perch in the open for extended periods of time (for birds that means more than 2 seconds).  Holly Latteman, the TA, excitedly motions to the top of a tree.  A yellow-billed cuckoo is hopping from branch to branch, its long white and brown tail visible as it moves.  Our group takes turns asking where the bird is as we all scan the foliage.  Luckily, the cuckoo sticks around long enough for us all to spot it.  I hear these birds much more often that I see them; their cackling, knocking call is a common summertime sound in southern Ohio.

As we hike towards a wetland, we catch a glimpse of a wood duck uttering its whinnying call as it flushes.  Painted turtles and bullfrogs sit basking on tree stumps along the shore.  My friend Amanda Szinte points out a green heron poised motionless on a log.  A kingfisher rattles past, flashing us with a streak of blue and white.  Chickadees dance overhead, flipping upside down as they pluck seeds from the branches.  A female pine warbler flutters across the pond and a chestnut-sided warbler sings in the distance.  Then we spot it, a woodpecker with a gray head hitching its way up a dead white pine.  Variations in plumage between the sexes and age classes are one of the hardest parts of bird identification.  You could memorize an entire North American field guide and still be dumbfounded by this gray-headed woodpecker.    

Only six species of woodpecker frequent Ohio’s woodlands.  Of them, the red-headed woodpecker might be the most stunning.  It has a deep, blood-red head and neck, a white belly and a regal, black back with large, white wing patches.  The attentive birder should listen for its call—a rapid, angry rattle—which often gives the bird’s location away.  Despite the red head being the most defining characteristic of the adult bird, juvenile red-headed woodpeckers have totally gray heads.  This is why it is imperative to know the entire life history of a species when trying to identify any bird.  Telling apart all the female warblers or juvenile gulls is still something that keeps me up at night.

As we move further into the white pine forest we find ourselves surrounded by dozens of woodpeckers.  Dr. Miles explains that the red-headed woodpecker is a relative of the acorn woodpecker, a western species famous for living in a life long family unit.  Our red-headed woodpeckers appear to be several families with newly fledged young in the midst of a territorial dispute.

We walk along under the feuding families, red and black flashing overhead.  Most of the birds we observe are juveniles.  Their call is a weaker more strained version of the adults’.  “They’re just learning to be woodpeckers,” Dr. Miles chuckles.  A fitting first birding trip for our class of beginner birders.  I look up at the gray-headed red-heads and smile as a young bird stashes an acorn in the wood of a dead tree.  

Despite their abundance in Zaleski, the red-headed woodpecker is listed as near threated by the IUCN Red List.  Populations have declined by some 70% from 1966 to 2014.  The felling of suitable dead trees is thought to be linked to their decline.  It is positive to see the species maintaining a stronghold right here in our own backyards.  In October, our class will be traveling down to South Carolina in search of an even rarer species of woodpecker, the endangered red-cockaded woodpecker.  With any luck we will find it and more.

Thanks for reading and keep living the field life!

Ryan

Hellbender Hopes

Part 1 HERE.

Matt and Andrew measuring the width of the stream.

We moved along the stream in transects, attempting to examine every large rock we came across.  I felt my feet go numb as I shuffled through the icy water.  As we moved past the coldest current, I was relieved to find the main stretch of river pleasantly warm.  We had feared the recent rains would muddy the waters and obscure our view of the bottom, but even where the river reached my waist, I could just make out the silhouettes of large stones through the water’s reflective surface.  It was a relief to find the stream workable, if not in prime condition.   

Donned in full wet suits, Matt and Andrew drifted along on their stomachs, examining the stream bed.  Matt busily showed Andrew how to search for suitable rocks where hellbenders might be hiding.  The stones had to be large, flattened and provide a tight cavity that lacked a significant current.  Christine and I were to record the number of available rocks and whether they could be flipped or not. 

“I’m gonna need you guys to help hold this one,” Matt said, indicating a broad, flat rock lying a meter below the surface.  Together, we lifted the immense stone slab until it was standing vertically in the water column.  Andrew and I gripped its algae-covered surface, straining to keep the current from toppling the stone backwards.  If this was a hellbender’s home, we wanted to move it as little as possible.  There was a moment of still anticipation as Matt rummaged around in the sediment.  His blue snorkel broke the surface with an excited hum.  A moment later, he popped up with a shiny, squirming hellbender clutched firmly in his gloved hand.  I heard myself let out a cheer of delight.  Matt plopped the squirming mass into his net and handed it to me.  I looked over the rim at the sleek, brown creature, undulating over itself with liquid fluidity.  I reached in and touched its shimmering skin, firm and slippery like Jell-O.

I carefully shuffled along the uneven river bottom back to the shore where we would process the ‘bender.  Matt slid the salamander into a halved PVC pipe to make it easier to work with and measure. In this controlled setting, we could admire the full glory of this enormous amphibian.  Its body was about a foot and a half long (adults can reach 26 inches) and thick around as my forearm.  It was a dark olive, brown with beady, fish-like eyes and wrinkled skin.  Hellbenders possess both lungs and gills, but they breath primarily through the wrinkled flaps of skin along their flanks that have earned them the nickname ‘old lasagna sides.’  Other curious names include ‘snot otter’ and ‘devil dog.’  Despite old fisherman's tales, these formidable-looking salamanders are completely harmless.

Matt Kaunert with an eastern hellbender.

Matt ran a circular PIT tag scanner over the amphibian’s body.  No beep—this was a new capture.  Passive Integrated Transponders, or PIT tags, allow researchers to identify individuals in a population.  They give each animal a unique number that can be read like a barcode.  Using a syringe, Matt injected a small, pill-sized chip under the hellbender’s skin.  The behemoth didn’t even seem to notice. 

“In Ohio the populations are pretty bad.  Here in Pennsylvania they’re doing better and in some streams the numbers are really very good,” Matt explained.  Once found throughout the Ohio River and its tributaries, hellbender populations have decreased by some 82% in Ohio.  Siltation—when streams become chocked with sediment from runoff—is largely to blame for the decline.  Diseases like chytrid fungus (Bd), habitat loss, acid mine drainage and other pollutants are also lead causes.  Combined, these impacts have left the eastern hellbender at risk for extirpation in my home state.  Adults not killed by the changes in their environment face another problem effecting the long-term survival of their species: an inability to successfully reproduce.

Hellbenders are long lived animals; they can survive in the wild for over 30 years.  Hellbenders don’t begin breeding until they are between five and eight years of age.  From August to September, Males defend a territory and excavate a nest.  Females may each lay up to 500 eggs and allow a male to externally fertilize them (a rare trait in salamanders).  The male then guards the eggs until they hatch, fanning them with his tail to provide oxygen, and even selectively eating bad eggs.  When siltation smothers a nest, males are incapable of successfully caring for the eggs and often end up eating the entire batch.  The reasons behind this are not fully understood.

In streams where siltation has been reduced, hellbender populations have still not rebounded.  Many modified streams lack the large rocks under which hellbenders lay their eggs.  That is where Matt’s nest boxes come into play.  These artificial rocks will not only provide hellbenders with a place to nest, but also allow us a noninvasive way to monitor their behavior and reproductive success.  Determining if hellbenders will use these concrete coffins is the trick.  Ohio’s populations are too sparse for a large scale behavioral experiment like this.  That’s why PA, with its relatively intact populations, is the starting point for the project.  If all goes as planned, these boxes will be used to help boost Ohio’s dwindling hellbender numbers to sustainable levels.

Matt and Andrew flipped some 68 rocks and caught three hellbenders and a mudpuppy (a smaller species of fully aquatic salamander) by the end of our search.  The second two ‘benders were smaller, about a foot in length.  “That’s a reassuring size,” Matt pointed out.  Young, three-year-old hellbenders are clearly surviving in these streams—a sign that populations are still healthy.  We were ecstatic to have caught something even when conditions had seemed so poor.

Some streams that Matt surveys have such a dense population that, "every other rock seems to hide a hellbender," he explained.  Soon we will return to PA for more hellbender surveys and to deploy Matt's nest boxes.  We will also be releasing head-started juveniles in streams in Ohio and West Virginia.  It is exciting to be part of the effort to bring back one of Ohio's most impressive amphibians.  

More soon and keep living the field life.
RBW