Hi Lori,
It sounds like you are in the other forest type that I mentioned, where
conifers are dominant or co-dominant in the canopy. Though no doubt,
among the 800+ OBOL subscribers, someone is bound to come up with an
example of Red-breasted Sapsuckers nesting in purely deciduous habitat
without any big-leaf maples.
"Riparian" type forests have spread out quite a bit in the Willamette
Valley landscape, outside of areas that meet the hydrological definition
of riparian. In some places, there are active efforts to restore
"riparian forest" where there has been no such thing for hundreds, if
not thousands of years.
Recently, a mid-valley resident who has taken up the idea of restoring
native habitat expressed puzzlement over the apparent poverty of native
berry-bearing shrubs in his neighborhood -- not much but snowberry and
poison-oak -- despite that there is plenty of ash, ash-oak, and
ash-oak-conifer forest. When I looked up his location on the map of
pre-settlement Willamette Valley habitats, it turned out that his yard
was in the middle of former prairie and oak savanna, at least half a
mile from the nearest strand of riparian forest.
Happy birding,
Joel
On Tue, 2015-04-14 at 07:34 -0700, L Markoff wrote:
'tis interesting that they were missed in habitat lacking Bigleaf Maples.
They nest here and we have no Bigleaf Maples, but instead a mix of conifers
and the other deciduous trees you mentioned. We also are not what I would
call riparian. We are not close to a river/stream but a hilly, wooded
neighborhood with only a few trickles going through that swell a little when
it rains. The favorite tree for the Red-breasted Sapsuckers in my yard is
the Chokecherry, Prunus virginiana. I have watched them drill wells in it on
numerous occasions. Red-breasted Sapsuckers are versatile birds.
Lori Markoff
Eugene
