Networking

For those of us who keep life-lists or those who simply want to see new birds for the aesthetics of it, the networks established by the birding community have become all-important. Today, our target bird was the elusive Red-cockaded woodpecker. The chain of events leading to this bird included e-mailing for information to several local Audubon clubs, a couple of phone calls to local naturalists, suggestions from people as far away as New York, and finally a most helpful lead provided by the Sebastian River State Park here in Florida. We were here at the wrong time of day as the birds would surely have left their nest cavities and would be scattered over a large range foraging. But fate was on our sides today and shortly after we entered the woodlands, my wife called out that she had a woodpecker in her binoculars with "no sign of red". We scampered over to her side, and sure enough, we found not one but three Red-cockaded woodpeckers working the pines on either side of the trail. We had (with the help of many others) found our target within the first 1/2 mile of our search. Without networking, we would have been hard-pressed to even know where to start.