Cover sketch: Saw-whet owl, by Bob Hines of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Washington, D.C.
Cavity-Nesting Birds
of
North American Forests
Virgil E. Scott
Denver Wildlife Research Center
Keith E. Evans
North Central Forest Experiment Station
David R. Patton
Rocky Mountain Forest and Range Experiment Station
Charles P. Stone
Denver Wildlife Research Center
Illustrated by
Arthur Singer
Agriculture Handbook 511
November 1977
Forest Service
U.S. Department of Agriculture
For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office Washington, D.C. 20402
Stock No. 001-000-03726-9
- Scott, Virgil E., Keith E. Evans, David R. Patton, and Charles P. Stone.
- 1977. Cavity-nesting birds of North American forests. U.S. Dep. Agric., Agric. Handb. 511, 112 p.
Habitat, cavity requirements, and foods are described for 85species of birds that nest in cavities in dead or decadent trees.Intensive removal of such trees would disastrously affect breedinghabitat for many of these birds that help control destructiveforest insects. Birds are illustrated in color; distributions aremapped.
PREFACE
This Handbook is the result of a cooperative effort betweenthe Forest Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture, and theFish and Wildlife Service, U.S. Department of the Interior.Authors Scott and Stone are wildlife research biologists withthe Fish and Wildlife Service’s Denver Wildlife ResearchCenter. Scott is stationed in Fort Collins, Colorado. AuthorsEvans and Patton are principal wildlife biologists with theForest Service’s North Central Forest Experiment Station andRocky Mountain Forest and Range Experiment Station, respectively.Evans is stationed in Columbia, Missouri, in cooperationwith the University of Missouri, while Patton is stationed inTempe, Arizona, in cooperation with Arizona State University.
Special thanks are due Arthur Singer, who graciouslydonated the use of his illustrations from “A guide to fieldidentification: Birds of North America,” by Robbins, Bruun,and Zim, which are reproduced here with permission of theWestern Publishing Company. The distribution maps are alsoreproduced with the permission of Western Publishing Company.© Copyright 1966 by Western Publishing Company, Inc.
We would like to thank Kimberly Hardin, Beverly Roedner,Mary Gilbert, Steve Blair, and Michael, Leslie, and Mary Stonefor their assistance in collecting literature. A special thanks toJill Whelan for her assistance in literature searches, checkingreferences and scientific names, and assembling this publication.The assistance of Robert Hamre in encouraging and guidingthe preparation of this manuscript is acknowledged andvery much appreciated.
Cavity-Nesting Birds of
North American Forests
Many species of cavity-nesting birds have declined becauseof habitat reduction. In the eastern United States, whereprimeval forests are gone, purple martins depend almost entirelyon man-made nesting structures (Al