Excerpt from "Banding RCWs"

June 2. Blue sky, warm day, cool breeze. My hands were spotted with pine tar from helping wildlife biologist Laura Housh load gear and a Swedish climbing ladder from her truck onto a four-wheeler. Laura was banding endangered red-cockaded woodpecker chicks, and she had invited me along to watch . . .

“All of our banded birds--RCWs, wood ducks, doves--have an aluminum Fish and Wildlife Service band,” she explained. On each USFWS band is a number which Laura forwards to a center in Maryland where it’s entered into a nationwide data base.

With deft fingers and special pliers, Laura put three colored plastic bands on one leg of the chick, and one aluminum and one colored band on the other. Then she recorded each chick’s colors and number on a spreadsheet . . .

Because the Carolina Sandhills NWR has a stable red-cockaded population, the refuge donates RCWs to other refuges to aid in species recovery. “We only translocate subadults, and we have to identify the birds we translocate.” She held up a chick. “For example, if this bird is the cluster’s only helper male,” she said, referring to the RCWs’ remarkable family structure, “I wouldn’t translocate him. I’d keep him here on the refuge” . . .

She handed me the chick. It was warm, the talons were well-developed, and the skin was so transparent you could see the internal organs. . . . I tried to imagine what kind of life it would have--whether it would be a helper or breeder; whether it would remain at the refuge or be translocated to Virginia, Arkansas, or elsewhere; and whether its offspring and the Sandhills crew could help keep its kind from going the way of Carolina parakeets.