By Theron M. Terhune, PhD, Game Bird Program Director
While the devastating effects of hurricanes headline the news and social media, from wind-torn towns and cities to flooded interstates and washed out roadways, their impacts on wildlife, and bobwhite in particular, are frequently part of the conversation during or following such events. Numerous studies have shown that birds have an uncanny “sixth sense” for detecting storm events well in advance—as much as 5–7 days—of approaching storms. Birds, like mammals, can detect changes in barometric pressure, and are also believed to detect infrasound (low frequency sound) emitted from large storm events like hurricanes and tornados. These built-in detection devices provide an innate mechanism to alter behavior in response to approaching storms. In bobwhites, we observe both adults and broods shift into heavy feeding mode in preparation for hurricane events.
Figure 1a&b.Two radio-tagged broods intensively monitored (checked every 30 minutes during daylight hours) on 2 separate days. Day 1 was a normal daily foray, 3-weeks prior to a hurricane event (location marked by red flags) and Day 2 was 1 day prior to a hurricane event (locations marked by green flags). During normal daily movement bouts 29% (left figure) and 49% (right figure) of brood locations were in fields exhibiting foraging behavior compared to 71% and 67% the day prior to the hurricane event.
While some birds leave the area in the path of a hurricane altogether, bobwhites ignore the evacuation notice and hunker down, seeking cover to wait out the storm. How they fare, we have discovered, is largely dependent on their age and the amount of rainfall. This year we experienced two hurricanes on our study sites being monitored with radio-tagged birds: one in North Carolina with Hurricane Florence and, of course, the more recent Hurricane Michael, here closer to home in the Red Hills and Albany regions. I am pleased to report that the effects of Hurricane Michael on direct bird mortality was negligible on the bobwhite population. We did not lose a single radio-tagged adult bird on any of our three study sites (Tall Timbers, Dixie, and Albany) to the storm. In addition to adult birds, we had several radio-tagged chicks being monitored during this time on Tall Timbers and Dixie Plantation. We observed less than 4% loss of our radio-tagged chicks due to the storm, which is phenomenal.
Hurricane Florence, on the other hand, was much more impactful on both adults and chicks. We observed about a 20% mortality of adults directly associated with the storm event in North Carolina. Bobwhite chick loss was also much higher on our North Carolina study site where the majority (nearly 100%) of chicks less than 4 weeks of age succumbed to the impacts of the storm. In addition, we observed ~55% loss of chicks that were 4-8 weeks of age, while chicks greater than 8 weeks of age fared much better and similar to adult birds. Nesting was also impacted by Hurricane Florence, with about half of our nests being destroyed by flooding and/or induced abandonment, likely related to stress.
A big difference on the level of impact between these two major storm events on bobwhites was timing (age of chicks) and amount of rainfall. The majority of the chicks on the ground during Hurricane Michael were 4+ weeks old, compared to variable chick ages in North Carolina, where some were as young as 1 week old when Hurricane Florence hit. Also, reports of 35 inches of rainfall resulted in large-scale flooding on our study site in North Carolina, compared to only 1–4 inches observed from Hurricane Michael here in the Red Hills and Albany region. As such, when bobwhites are in the eye of the storm and when it comes to hurricane impacts timing and amount of rainfall is everything!
The Stoddard Bird Lab distributed bird boxes in south Florida last month in prep for our exciting and novel attempt to reintroduce the Brown-headed Nuthatch to Jonathan Dickinson State Park. Thirty-five of the simple-to-make structures were placed on St. Sebastian River Preserve State Park where there is a healthy nuthatch population. The boxes nearly double nesting success for this declining species and should make about 20 juvenile nuthatches available for translocation later this year, just 70 miles south to Jonathan Dickinson State Park.
The nuthatch disappeared from Jonathan Dickinson State Park and other nearby public lands in the late 1950s. Given its sedentary habits, the bird has not recolonized sites that now contain suitable habitat. The state of Florida has conserved over 40,000 acres of pinelands in areas once occupied by nuthatches in south Florida, and this could be a chance to re-establish a very large population capable of bolstering other fragmented populations in south Florida.
We will also be investigating whether individual nuthatches differ in their translocation potential. We plan to assess exploratory behavior for each individual prior to shipping them off to Jonathan Dickinson. This behavior can be quantified by placing individuals in a large cloth tent and watching how they respond to the novel environment. Some jump around anxiously and explore the new environs while others perch quietly and simply stare at the novel surroundings. Do those anxious, exploratory birds make better colonists, or will the birds that behave more cautiously be the ones that we find at Jonathan Dickinson a year after their release? Recent studies have found these individual behavioral traits have a genetic basis and can be reliably scored using some brief tent time prior to translocation.
The Stoddard Bird Lab is also pleased to welcome Rob Meyer as its new woodpecker conservation specialist. Rob completed his MSc at Mississippi State University working on the interactions of Flying Squirrels and Red-cockaded Woodpeckers. He’s also a seasoned bird bander, and has already provided great help with outreach activities and some of our on-going work with Henslow’s Sparrows. Rob inventory cavity trees in the region and help to install scores of new artificial cavities on properties with Safe Harbor Agreements. We’re also in the early stages of planning to reintroduce the woodpecker to Dixie Plantation and other properties.
Old longleaf pines will assist with tree-ring study of historical fires
By Monica Rother, PhD, Fire Ecologist
Members of the Fire Ecology and Wildland Fire Science Programs at Tall Timbers recently collected tree-ring data from old live trees on the Lathrop Bayou Tract, Florida. The team included Monica Rother (Fire Ecologist), Kevin Robertson (Fire Ecology Program Director), and Saunders Drukker (Wildland Fire Science Technician). The Bureau of Land Management owns the tract, which is located on a small peninsula in the panhandle of Florida. Access is limited because private land on the eastern side prohibits access to the western side, except by boat. This research was conducted with assistance from Dann Childs of Tyndall Air Force Base and Melanie Kaeser of the US Fish and Wildlife Service.
Kevin Robertson and Monica Rother of the Fire Ecology Program after a short boat ride to Lathrop Bayou Tract. Photo by Saunders Drukker.
Sampling efforts targeted older looking longleaf pines, with flat tops or thick upper branches. We used increment borers to extract a pencil thin sample of wood from each tree of interest. This sampling method does not harm the live tree and allows the researcher to not only learn the tree’s age, but also to examine tree-ring patterns throughout the life of the tree. Most trees in a given location will exhibit similar patterns of narrow and wide rings related to year-to-year variability in climate, including periods of drought and abundant rainfall.
Kevin Robertson director of the Fire Ecology Program enters a flatwoods site known as the Lathrop Bayou Tract. Photo by Monica Rother.
In all, we cored 19 longleaf pine on the Lathrop Bayou Tract and two additional slash pine growing at a nearby location. The cores were placed in paper straws and transported back to Tall Timbers for processing and analysis. Fire Ecology interns Joshua Faylo and Dylan Lockard are now assisting with the mounting, sanding, and tree-ring analysis of the cores.
At left, Wildland Fire Science technician Saunders Drukker uses an increment borer to collect a pencil-thin sample of wood from a living longleaf pine on the Lathrop Bayou Tract. Photo by Monica Rother. At right, a tree core from an old longleaf pine sampled on the Lathrop Bayou Tract. Photo by Monica Rother.
Once processed, we will use the tree cores along with previously collected wood from dead trees to build a multi-century site-level representation of annual tree-ring width patterns. This record, known as a tree-ring chronology, is needed to date fire-scarred stumps that were collected in October of 2017. See: http://talltimbers.org/news/news.php?news_id=644 . Monica Rother, Kevin Robertson, and Jean Huffman (Tall Timbers Research Associate), will ultimately use the fire scars in the stumps to learn about the historical frequency and season of fires for the study area. This research complements similar work led by Jean Huffman on the St. Joseph Bay State Buffer Preserve.
Parasitic Chatter: addressing concerns of recent parasite findings in Northern Bobwhite
By Dr. Theron M. Terhune, Game Bird Program Director at Tall Timbers
A recent article in the the Sporting Classics Daily cited the eyeworm (Oxyspirura petrowi) and a parasitic cecal worm (Aulonecephalus pennula) as the cause for population declines in Texas. Naturally these reports of parasites in bobwhites has created a flurry of concern and questions relevant to bobwhite populations here in the Red Hills and Albany plantation area. The eyeworm reported in Texas and Oklahoma has not been detected so far in our area or on the East Coast to our knowledge—we have and will continue to send samples annually to be tested for disease and parasites. Whereas we value and support all research aimed at advancing the needle forward in understanding the ecology, conservation and management of bobwhite, we caution the interpretation of these findings as unequivocal explanations for quail declines in the Southeast or other regions.
The most recent findings of presence and prevalence of parasites in bobwhite is not by any stretch novel. Parasites are not only relatively common in quail and other game birds but have been known to exist since the early 1900s (Kobayashi 1927, Cram 1937), and more ubiquitously reported in quail in the 1960s and 70s (Kellogg and Calpin 1971). Recent claims not only contradict past findings that parasitic worms are an infrequent cause of mortality (Davidson et al. 1980, 1982, and 1991, and Brennan 1999), but do so without empirical data linking the presence of said parasites to survival, reproduction and recruitment in bobwhite populations. One big difference in western bobwhite populations compared to the Red Hills is the “boom or bust” cycles common in Texas, which is linked tightly to rainfall. Environmental conditions during periods of extended drought may render bobwhite more vulnerable to disease and parasites due potential altered physiological tolerances related to heat and water stress. Regardless of these environmental stressors, the lack of data on the demographic effects limits inference on how these parasites truly impact bobwhite populations in Texas and other parts of the range.
Despite range-wide bobwhite declines, properties in the Red Hills continue to experience some of the highest bobwhite densities ever recorded historically, which is a direct testament that habitat management still works when applied correctly. We recognize that research on this topic is ongoing, but we have not yet seen evidence of population-level impacts on bobwhites. Therefore, we urge you to stay the course in continuing to implement sound habitat management as well as incorporate supplemental feeding and predation management to mitigate natural cyclic declines common in bobwhite populations.
By Scott Pokswinski, Research Biologist and Kevin Hiers, Wildland Fire Scientist
In the Southeast, most objectives for prescribed fire seek to topkill shrubs or promote pine regeneration, but how species differ in tradeoffs between investment in evolutionary defenses that aid in survival versus rapid growth to escape fire remain poorly understood. For instance, are hardwoods that are repeatedly top killed capable of altering bark thickness? How does frequency of canopy loss alter photosynthetic rates and underground storage? How does the shape of individual shrubs alter fire’s heat transfer to vulnerable tissues such as cambium and buds? A new twelve-year experiment in joint collaboration of the USDA Forest Services Pacific Northwest Research Station and Tall Timbers Wildland Fire Program is investigating mechanisms of fire resistance in pyrophytic trees (trees that are resistant to fire) and hopes the work will connect mechanisms of plant response to observations of reprouting and survival noted in previous Tall Timbers research.
Seven species of hardwoods and three pine species were chosen to be planted in a two-acre area south of Tower Course under the shadow of the former television tower at Tall Timbers. These trees will be treated with fire and clipping at different intervals, with individuals of each species burned or clipped every two, four or six years. Novel observations of heat flux from fires on individuals will be compared to growth and patterns of tree damage. Other trees will be excavated to compare physical characteristics such as underground mass, bark thickness and texture, and branching. This experiment will allow us to see if increased rate of fire or clipping stimulates an increased investment in fire resistant strategies over controlled trees that were neither burned or clipped. We will also be able to compare these characteristics across species. The three pine species; longleaf (Pinus palustris), slash (P. elliottii), and loblolly (P. taeda) will be compared in one experiment and seven hardwoods; turkey oak (Quercus laevis), white oak (Q. alba), southern red oak (Q. falcata), sand live oak (Q. geminata), laurel oak (Q. hemisphaerica), red maple (Acer rubrum) and blackgum (Nyssa sylvatica) will be compared in the other.
In all, over 900 two-year-old trees were planted in two days by members of the Pacific Northwest Research lab and the Wildland Fire Program with the assistance of Tall Timbers land manager Eric Staller. With the substantial effort to get the trees in the ground over, trees will be given a few months of tender loving care before researchers begin to try to kill them with fire.
Ten species of trees are planted randomly in rows across the two-acre field. Over 900 individual trees were planted over two days.
A picture of a two-year-old turkey oak (Quercus laevis) showing bark texture at the time of initial establishment in the garden.
Wildland Fire Science technician Saunders Drukker mulching a laurel oak (Quercus hemisphaerica).
The M-CORES program, which includes the proposed Suncoast Connector Toll Road in Jefferson County, passed through the Florida Legislature at breakneck speed with little review or analysis. Tall Timbers has a number of concerns given the potential for significant and wide spread impacts. These include fragmenting public and private conservation lands, robbing business from Main Street Monticello, impacting our rivers and other water resources, and making prescribed fire more difficult and costly.
Join us in asking the Jefferson County Board of County Commissioners to OPPOSE the Suncoast Connector toll road and its path through Jefferson County.
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Selected Publications authored by Wildland Fire Science staff.
Educating and guiding the next generation of fire researchers and managers is a key goal of Wildland Fire Science and a resource for testing new ideas in fire research.
Tall Timbers hosts the Prescribed Fire Science Consortium, a national network of researchers and managers who promote integrated research and management to advance next generation tools for fire practitioners. https://arcg.is/1DSjDT
Working with partners in the Prescribed Fire Science Consortium, the program is building nexgen 3-D fuel beds using terrestrial LiDAR and novel sampling techniques to power new fire behavior models for prescribed fire managers. This work links to Tall Timbers work in wildlife habitat usage and ecological forestry.
Tall Timbers is leading an effort to map fire regimes at the landscape scale. Staff work with numerous agencies to evaluate fire records and satellite imagery to build this critical conservation database. https://skfb.ly/6DqOY
We are linking physics and field observations to understand the fluid dynamics of fire behavior surface fire regimes. Our work combines field observations using advanced thermal imaging techniques, laboratory studies, and coupled fire-atmospheric modeling to help managers improve outcomes of managed fire regimes.
Burn prioritization modeling seminars and fire modeling tools are supported by Wildland Fire Science to train managers in the important planning stages of prescribed fires.
The conserved lands of the Greater Red Hills region are found on working, income-producing properties that support agriculture, forestry, and recreational hunting. These properties contribute $272 million annually to local economies and support 2,300 jobs. [link to Planning & Advocacy section] The landowners’ strong stewardship ethic preserves their working lands while replenishing drinking water supplies, protecting water quality, and providing wildlife habitat for dozens of rare and endangered species. Tall Timbers’ conservation easements on these working properties encourage landowners to retain their traditional livelihood by keeping farms in family ownership.
Home to world-class wild quail populations, the Greater Red Hills region contains the largest concentration of gamebird preserves in the United States. These preserves also support the largest community of Red-cockaded woodpeckers on private lands. Indicators of high quality habitat found here include the gopher tortoise, Bachman’s sparrow, fox squirrel, and many amphibians. Tall Timbers’ conservation easements identify and protect the critical habitats of these species.
The region also boasts outstanding aquatic resources. Large river systems, like the Flint/Apalachicola, Ochlockonee, and Aucilla, flow from Georgia and feed into the Gulf of Mexico to support some of the world’s most productive estuaries. Large disappearing sinkhole lakes, like Iamonia, Miccosukee, and Jackson, provide habitat for an array of aquatic species and migratory birds. Tall Timbers’ conservation easements protect these vital watersheds and wetlands that are the lifeblood for the ecological health of the region.
Once dominated by longleaf pine, our pine woodlands support abundant wildlife and local economies. These forests need prescribed fire to stay healthy. Herbert L. Stoddard and his associates Ed and Roy Komarek were pioneers in this emerging scientific field during the mid-20th century. Tall Timbers continues that legacy with applied research on prescribed fire and land management. Today, there is a tremendous need to expand prescribed fire use beyond the Red Hills to ensure ecosystem health and reduce wildfire risk. Additionally, Tall Timbers uses conservation easements to permanently protect private woodlands while balancing the need for economic return from selective timbering.
Tall Timbers hosts the premier fire technology transfer organization—the Southern Fire Exchange. This JFSP funded effort helps connect research to management through webinars, workshops, and support of the Prescribed Fire Science Consortium.
The Longleaf Legacy landscape prescribed fire burn team arm of Wildland Fire Science works directly with landowners and partners to effectively put fire on the ground and promote prescribed fire throughout the region.
Staff and researchers support Federal fire training by serving as a cadre for NWCG training courses, ranging from basic wildland fire to advanced fire effects.
(PFTC) specializes in training fire fighters the principles and techniques of prescribed fire through practical hands-on experience. https://www.fws.gov/fire/pftc/
Private land owners are the largest source of prescribed fire in the country. These land owners and the culture of fire that was maintained by them during decades of suppression are a part of why Tall Timbers is a world-wide center for prescribed fire science. Workshops and fire training are a critical focus of the Longleaf Legacy Landscape Burn Team and our support of the Georgia Forestry Commission Prescribed Fire Center in Marion County.
The Stoddard Bird Lab distributed bird boxes in south Florida last month in prep for our exciting and novel attempt to reintroduce the Brown-headed Nuthatch to Jonathan Dickinson State Park. Thirty-five of the simple-to-make structures were placed on St. Sebastian River Preserve State Park where there is a healthy nuthatch population. The boxes nearly double nesting success for this declining species and should make about 20 juvenile nuthatches available for translocation later this year, just 70 miles south to Jonathan Dickinson State Park. 
