By Jim Stengel, Red-Headed Woodpeckery Recovery 

The Red-headed Woodpecker Recovery project (RhWR) is now in its twelfth year of working to halt the decline and promote the recovery of Red-Headed Woodpeckers (RHWOs) in Minnesota through habitat preservation and restoration, research, and public education. Volunteers have done surveys of RHWOs from the project’s beginning. 

At the University of Minnesota’s Cedar Creek Ecosystem Science Reserve in East Bethel, trained citizen science volunteers locate breeding pairs of RHWOs and their nest trees, and many continue to monitor the birds through their breeding season. Since 2017, we have also sponsored collaborative research there. Our lead researcher, Dr. Elena West, is currently planning this year’s field work, procuring tracking devices for the birds and hiring field assistants, while we are also welcoming new members, engaging new volunteers, and raising money to fund this research. We hope that you can join us in this exciting endeavor! 

You Can Help 

You can help by reporting RHWO sightings on eBird. If you find one or more active nests outside of Cedar Creek, let us know. If you own or manage oak savanna or property with dead or decaying trees of any kind, save the snags wherever safety and health permit, and limit understory growth in support of RHWO habitat. 

If you’d like to join us as a trained citizen scientist to survey and monitor RHWOs at Cedar Creek, plan to attend an orientation there on Saturday, April 13. Or sign up for a guided tour of Cedar Creek’s RHWO nesting territory. For more on these and other opportunities, visit www.cedarcreek.umn.edu 

You can also help us and the birds by joining Red-headed Woodpecker Recovery project for just $20/year. 

Contributions of $150 and $210 will purchase radio-transmitters and geolocator devices that we attach to birds to study their habitat use and incubation in cavities. Contributors get to name and follow the bird wearing their device. Any amount you donate would help us match a current pledge of $2500. For updates and more information please see www.rhworesearch.org. 

Donate online or make checks payable to Audubon Chapter of Minneapolis (RHWR on the memo line) and mail to Audubon Chapter of Minneapolis, P.O. Box 3801, Minneapolis, MN 55403-0801.