Lewis’s Woodpecker habitat use, reproduction, and migratory behavior in post-fire landscapes

AOS Research Grant Seminar

Presenter: Frank Fogarty, Associate Professor, Cal Poly Humboldt; 2023 Kessel Fellowship winner

Lewis’s Woodpecker (Melanerpes lewis) is a declining species of western North America whose unusual behaviors and reliance on recently burned landscapes make it both a conservation priority and a challenging species to study. Dr. Fogarty’s lab has used a range of methods to investigate its habitat use, home-range size, nest-site selection, migratory behavior, and shifting use of burned and logged forests.  A Kessel Fellowship helped support a master’s project and two undergraduate honors theses to better our understanding recent losses from the species’ breeding range as well as apparent changes in its migratory strategies. Dr. Fogarty will present key findings from this work, including the first empirical estimates of home-range size and the first confirmed evidence of partial migration in the species.