By Pat Leonard
December 2006

Male Gray-and-buff Woodpecker, photo by Martjan Lammertink

If you’re wild about woodpeckers, you go where the woodpeckers are wild—even if it’s the middle of a jungle during rainy season with terrain best covered from the back of a bamboo-munching elephant.

For Cornell Lab of Ornithology scientist and large-woodpecker expert Martjan Lammertink, that translates into a two-month expedition to Myanmar (formerly called Burma) and, he says, one heck of a good time. Funded by a grant from the National Geographic Society, Lammertink joined an international team surveying woodpecker populations in the 620-square-mile Alaungdaw Kathapha National Park in Sagaing Province in the north-central part of country, as well as an area along Myanmar’s southernmost tip near the Thai border.

Why Myanmar? Myanmar has large tracts of undisturbed habitat—more than half the country is still covered in forest. And there are lots of woodpeckers. “Southeast Asia is extremely interesting for woodpecker biology,” says Lammertink. “You find anywhere from 14 to 17 species together in one forest, more than anywhere else on the planet.”

During September and October, 2006, six observers tramped along trails and through dense brush along pre-measured transects, doing point counts, recording sounds, taking pictures, and collecting reams of data, all in pursuit of the expedition’s three main goals.

Goal One: Logging and the Great Slaty Woodpecker

Female Great Slaty Woodpecker, photo by Martjan Lammertink

What logging did to the Ivory-billed Woodpecker in North America it may also do to the Great Slaty Woodpecker. Lammertink says the subspecies of Great Slaty Woodpecker found in Myanmar responds very negatively to logging, as it does elsewhere. “In Borneo the decline is a little more than 80 percent after just one round of logging, so that’s pretty dramatic,” he says. “You lose four-fifths of your original density. We have not had a chance to analyze all the data we gathered in Myanmar, but so far it looks as if the same trend will hold there.” Because the national park forest is undisturbed while land nearby is being logged, the researchers were able to compare the population density of woodpeckers in the two areas.

Goal Two: Woodpecker Interactions

How woodpeckers interact is another fascinating avenue of study. Woodpeckers are all equipped with big sharp bills, and specialized feet, tails, and tongues that allow them to cling to trees and strip bark for insects. But for all their similarities, different species have developed distinct foraging styles. Expedition observers watched foraging woodpeckers for 60 seconds, noting the height of the bird in the tree, how fast it moved, whether it hung upside down or not, the diameter of the tree, and much more. Lammertink says there are some very clear differences between species in where and how they forage in the forest.

Goal Three: Woodpecker Family Tree

Male Greater Flameback, photo by Martjan Lammertink

The expedition also gathered samples for DNA analysis which will be done in collaboration with Dr. William S. Moore and Dr. Kathy Miglia in the Department of Biological Sciences at Wayne State University in Detroit. “We think the parent stock for all the world’s woodpeckers may be here in Southeast Asia,” Lammertink points out, “so if you want to go to the roots of woodpecker biology, this is an exciting part of the world to explore.” Put it all together and scientists will gain more insight into how woodpeckers differentiated into distinct species over the millennia.

Bonus Birds

Since so little survey work has been done in Myanmar, the expedition also recorded 64 birds species not previously documented in the park. “One of the more interesting finds was the Oriental Bay-Owl, which was not only new for the park but had not been known to occur anywhere in that region of Myanmar, so that was a pretty significant range extension,” says Lammertink.

Ornithology by Elephant

Lammertink lights up when you ask him about the benefits of packing a pachyderm. “The elephants were certainly a revelation for us,” he says, “It’s just magnificent—each elephant can carry up to 600 pounds of equipment!” The team also rode the elephants when they moved among three campsites in the park.

Bird guide in hand, Martjan travels by elephant to a new campsite in Myanmar.

“The really cool thing is that they eat a lot bamboo so when they go over these narrow forest trails, they grab left and right for pieces of bamboo with their trunk and they are snacking while they’re walking,” Lammertink says. In between trips, the drivers set the elephants loose in the forest for a few days. They know approximately where the elephants are foraging and find them again by following the sound of the bell each animal wears around its neck.

Looking ahead

With logging on the rise in Southeast Asia, and populations of the Great Slaty Woodpecker declining sharply in those areas, Lammertink and his colleagues believe the bird should be listed as a threatened species. They are making that proposal to BirdLife International and the IUCN (International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources) also known as the World Conservation Union.

The next step is to learn the long-term survival rate and reproductive success of Great Slaty Woodpeckers, comparing populations in logged and primary forests in Southeast Asia, but not necessarily in Myanmar.

 “Within the military government in Myanmar, there are often changes in regional leadership and frequent policy changes that are not conducive to planning a long term project,” Lammertink says. But he and others are determined to keep studying these birds in the hope that enlightened conservation may preserve this wonderland of woodpeckers.

Myanmar Expedition 2006