Red-headed Woodpecker & Eastern Whip-poor-will

Our automated recording units (ARU’s – Songmeter Minis) provide a lightweight solution allowing for acoustic monitoring of bird vocalizations and distribution throughout the park. ARU’s record the sounds of the surrounding birds from a fixed location creating an inventory of the species that occur.

These recordings reveal not only where the birds are, but also give us clues about activity, whether that be feeding, establishing territory, or chiseling out a nest cavity. However, we need to combine acoustic measures with in-field habitat measurements to understand what habitat features the birds require. During the breeding season, parkwide vegetation surveys and our monthly roadside Whip-poor-will survey help fill in these gaps.

Our first survey investigates the habitat requirements of Red-headed Woodpecker across areas of the Park known to be occupied by woodpeckers in the past. While searching for woodpeckers, we take measurements of the surrounding vegetation, canopy openness, and snag density to uncover what components of the habitat most greatly influence woodpecker occurrence. If we can expose the features that are most related to woodpecker occurrence, we can use this information to replicate these conditions in other areas of the park.

The Eastern Whip-poor-will roadside survey conducted over the last decade allows us to examine the year-over-year changes in occupancy at different locations throughout the Park. Generally, these surveys have revealed that the occupancy of Whip-poor-will in the park is increasing by roughly 3.2 percent per year suggesting an overall improvement in the amount of suitable habitat within the Park. It also shows where areas of decline may occur, typically in areas where the shrub layer has grown denser over time.

Our hope is to correlate this information with our parkwide acoustic surveillance and examine the effectiveness of roadside surveys in measuring the population of Eastern Whip-poor-will in the Park.

Combined, acoustic and in-field monitoring of the birds and their habitats are used to guide future management plans aiming to recreate appropriate habitat for our target species within the park.

Efforts to directly improve the Red-headed Woodpecker and Eastern Whip-poor-will’s success are underway in the Pinery!

The removal of invasive plant species, especially the park’s historic pines, will open the forest, providing new insect foraging opportunities for both of our species of interest in the air and on the ground. The clearing of this space also provides the desired nesting habitat for Eastern Whip-poor-will.

Prescribed burns will clear much of the understory vegetation, opening additional space while creating snags suitable for Red-headed Woodpecker nesting. Although the Park was unable to conduct a burn in 2021 due to COVID-19 restrictions, we are hopeful in our burn plans for 2022.

In open areas where burns are not feasible, combining invasive vegetation removal with the deployment of artificial nestboxes for Red-headed Woodpecker may provide nesting habitat where snags cannot be created. We’re interested to see whether the nestboxes will be used by Red-headed woodpeckers and which style of nestbox they may prefer.