Description: Eight woodpecker species breed in the greater San Francisco Bay Area, from the Lewis’s of the Diablo Range to the Pileated of the Coast Range. Acorn and Nuttall’s Woodpeckers are fixtures across much of the region, along with Downy, Hairy and Flicker. Even the Red-breasted Sapsucker can be found breeding locally in the Santa Cruz Mountains. In many locations, multiple species can be seen nesting side-by-side. Are they competing for food and nesting resources? What are they eating, and how do they decide where to nest? And how can they excavate for feeding and nest construction without getting concussions or retinal hemorrhages?!
Join North American woodpecker specialist, Steve Shunk, for a primer on the natural history, ecology, and conservation of the Bay Area’s breeding woodpeckers. Steve will present an overview of the woodpecker family, discussing breeding and non-breeding behaviors that make each species unique. He will also touch on the amazing woodpecker anatomy, variations of which allow each species to specialize without competition. His presentation will conclude with current conservation issues that affect our local woodpeckers and their habitats, as well as keystone roles played by woodpeckers in our forests and woodlands.
Steve Shunk started birding at San Jose’s Alum Rock Park in 1989, while teaching for the Youth Science Institute. By 1992, he was teaching adult birding classes for several South Bay recreation programs. Steve moved to central Oregon’s ‘Woodpecker Wonderland’ in 1997, where 11 woodpecker species can be found breeding in watersheds smaller than the city of San Jose. This phenomenon sparked a 20-year obsession studying this charismatic family of birds. Steve’s work as a field biologist has taken him from the Coast Range of Oregon to California’s Sierra Nevada. Most recently, he spent three seasons as a field biologist for the Institute for Bird Populations studying Black-backed Woodpeckers of California’s Sierra Nevada and Cascade Mountains. Steve was a former board member of SCVAS, and he co-founded the East Cascades Bird Conservancy. He started his tour company, Paradise Birding, in 1997, and he currently leads natural history tours to 12 countries on four continents, including a winter trip to the SF Bay Area. Steve’s woodpecker fanaticism inspired him to found central Oregon’s annual woodpecker festival in 2008, and his Peterson Reference Guide to Woodpeckers of North America was published in 2016.
See the Speaker Series page for directions.