Dick Cannings wrote:

"I think Lewis' Woodpeckers were strongly associated with burned and
slash-burned logged areas in the Vancouver area in the '20s and '30s; at
least Ian McTaggart-Cowan claims they were common in such habitats around
North and West Vancouver then. When these forests regenerated, the
woodpeckers disappeared. As to the effect of starlings, the only bird
I've seen evict a starling from a nest hole was a Lewis' Woodpecker."

Thanks, Dick. I couldn't have asked for better support for my LEWO demise
hypothesis. It prompts me to add that the only time I've seen *Lewis'
Woodpeckers* evicted were by kestrels, at Manastash Canyon, and I remember
having a moment of reflection about the Kestrel Project started by the
Falcon Research Group to provide kestrel boxes over a wide area of eastern
WA. Obviously a good deed, anyone would agree, yet what happens if
kestrels did *so* well that they became a threat to another species that
isn't exactly present at high densities. Whew. I keep pointing these
things out so tweeters (and I wish fervently the rest of the world) would
realize how complex nature is and thus how it isn't always just "the good
guys vs. the bad guys."

And, speaking of good guys vs. bad guys, here's another example from the
very same project. It seemed to me that it really has succeeded and has
been one of our more worthwhile volunteer projects. But I was briefly
involved a few years ago in a discussion about kestrels vs. bluebirds.
Because one kestrel (or more?) had been seen to take fledgling bluebirds,
the Yakima Audubon Society put intense pressure on Bud Anderson to remove
kestrel boxes from the Umtanum Road/Wenas Creek area, one of our more
successful and famous Bluebird Trails. After some deliberation about
whether a fight was justified--the kestrel boxes were actually threatened,
and I wrote a letter in their defense--he decided to capitulate and removed
them.

I was on that road in late April the following spring, and I've never seen
so many kestrels milling about; flying, calling, chasing each other, a
dozen of them along a short stretch of Umtanum Creek. I don't know if it
was my imagination, but I had the strongest feeling that all of those birds
had come back to find their nest sites gone and didn't really know what to
do, as if a bunch of Spotted Owls had returned to their old growth after
migration and had found a shopping mall. It was a weird but powerful
experience, and it connected a few more neurons in the part of my brain
that figuratively raises its eyebrows at our society.

If the "kestrel-rights" people had been as well organized and committed as
the "bluebird-rights" people, there might have been full-scale war on
Umtanum Road that year. I envisioned frenzied bluebird lovers destroying
kestrel boxes, frenzied kestrel lovers destroying bluebird boxes, fist
fights (by stereotypical mild-mannered birders) when they occasionally
encountered each other..... I'm not kidding; that's how the emotions
seemed on the part of the bluebirders. What is the matter with us?

Dennis Paulson phone: (206) 756-3798
Slater Museum of Natural History fax: (206) 756-3352
University of Puget Sound e-mail: dpaulson at ups.edu
Tacoma, WA 98416