To find the best answer to this question where does one go? To a woodpecker. After all, most woodpeckers spend virtually their entire lives spiraling up trunks and clinging upside down to limbs. Have you ever seen one slip and fall to the ground? Have you ever stopped to wonder why woodpeckers need no ropes, […]
It takes an unfailingly curious and persistent photographer like Peggy Honda to reveal the staggering number of bugs that woodpeckers capture, especially when raising a family. How many does it take? There are too many variables to be sure, but when scientists have examined the stomachs of woodpeckers after death, between 500-950 insects have […]
What the Cavity Conservation Initiative did yesterday at Caspers Park in San Juan Capistrano, California was not unusual. We participated in its annual Outdoors Adventures Day. But the dollop of cream for our booth this year was fourteen year-old volunteer, Tomas Dardis. He talked tirelessly about cavity nesting birds and their need for dead […]
The advantages of nest boxes are strong and indisputable. However, stacked against the wider ecological benefits of a dead tree, a nest box is a sad substitute indeed. If in doubt, please open the tab on our website titled, The Value of Dead Trees. Nest boxes by their very nature, and usually by necessity, are […]
Today a group of Environmental Education students at Pitzer College in Claremont, CA learned about the habitat value of dead and dying trees. Their guest speaker, Gillian Martin, Program Director of the Cavity Conservation Initiative (CCI), left knowing that each student carried a new lantern for the mission of the program. After Gillian’s presentation and […]
Mark the date. March 5, 2016. The day photographer, Peggy Honda, captured something rarely seen in Southern California. She knew it would thrill us. This home-hunting pair of Western Bluebirds paused to examine an abandoned woodpecker nest site as a possible nursery. To the average passer-by, this sight might have been unremarkable. To the Cavity […]
Take a look at this diminutive owl and get ready to see it as never before. Here is a 5oz Romeo that could easily have been Tiffany’s jeweled emblem for love. Long before Valentine’s Day etched its way into our calendar, the male Western Screech-Owl made spring nights an opera for courtship. It is an […]
Here is a proud tree that was destined to face a challenge no redwood should. In a hot, dry, Southern California climate, a Coast Redwood just doesn’t have a very good shot at the life it had a right to expect. Its natural home is farther north and nearer the coast where it would receive heavy […]
Meet Dessi, Emmie, Alex, Lorenzo, Teodalina and Celia. They are members of Pasadena Audubon Society. Their creative and engaging leader, Susan Gilliland, asked if they would let their voices be heard on behalf of cavity nesting birds. A great opportunity had presented itself. With lightening speed, the youngsters merged art with advocacy! We display the […]
You are daring, all who retained these dying trees! And you are visionaries. Let’s tell the world why! The Cavity Conservation Initiative is proud to showcase your decisions because when nay sayers pushed back, saying, “But its ugly! It’s dangerous! It’s dead for heaven sake! Why would you want to keep it?” you remained resolute, […]
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