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Tuesday, November 26, 2019

Red-headed Woodpecker population status update

Red-headed Woodpecker has continued to decline in some areas of its geographic range.

This is the trend graph for WI from the Breeding Bird Survey:

























Other info pertaining to WI, from eBird Status & Trends:


















Records from WBBA II (the 2nd WI Atlas), may indicate some improvement, as also is the case in several other areas of this species' geographic range. Some areas of the United States show declines, but there does seem to be a slight resurgence; there may be a link (as there seemed to be in the 1970s) to the effects of much-increased "standing dead biomass" resulting from Emerald Ash Borer. Red-headed Woodpeckers only excavate in dead or dying trees, unlike some other woodpecker species.