WBIO student Emily Rindal recounts her summer field research in Montana
“My partner, Lauren Macfarland, and I worked in the Missoula area this summer
on Jennifer Woolf’s Black-backed woodpecker study. The Black-backed woodpecker (Picoides
arcticus) is a
naturally rare, wide-ranging species,
which prefers early post-fire habitat. To determine genetic population structures, Jennifer and her teams were taking blood from Black-backed woodpeckers and Hairy woodpeckers. The samples will be used to compare Black-backed woodpeckers’ and Hairy woodpeckers’ genetic population structures. From this information she will be able to determine their dispersal, which will aid in future management plans.
Our sites were the Black Mountain Fire on Blue Mountain, Fish Creek near Alberton, and Boles Meadow, which is near Placid Lake. Because we never saw or heard a Black-backed woodpecker in Boles Meadow our focus was on Fish Creek and Black Mountain. First, we had to find the woodpeckers’ cavities. To do this we had recordings of woodpeckers that we would play in the hopes that a woodpecker would respond. If they responded, we would find them, follow them, and (hopefully) find a cavity. If we found a cavity, we would determine the stage it was in: excavation, incubation, or nestlings. We would then return to this cavity when there were nestlings, and attempt to catch one of the parents. One of us would hide underneath camouflage, while the other would watch the cavity and signal when a parent entered the cavity to feed the nestlings. At this point, the person under the cavity would bring the hoop net over the cavity and wait for up to two hours. If a parent came into the hoop net it was lowered and retrieved. The parent was then weighed, banded, and bled.
 The hardest part of the job for me was having patience. Some days I would not hear or see any woodpeckers, and it was quite frustrating. Patience was also needed when we were trying to catch them. We had to wait for the parent to enter the cavity, and then we had to wait from the bird to come out of the cavity and into the hoop-net. I learned to have more patience, and not to get frustrated with myself when things do not go perfectly. However, the dull times were tempered by moments of excitement and joy. My favorite part was letting a bird go. It felt so amazing to see the woodpecker fly from my hand, and it was also a relief to see that the bird was ok after all the poking and prodding."
An added benefit of research that is not often considered is the local color that becomes available to the researcher. We had the fortune to spend Fourth of July in Polebridge, Montana. The crew that was staying there, Mark and Chris, contributed a float to the famous Polebridge Parade. Their float, of course, was a giant woodpecker with functional (and dangerous) wings. This just goes to show that we woodpecker researchers don’t always spend our days sitting next to tree trunks under camouflage.”
|