This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2005, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
The High Line trail crested at a shaded pond high above Mirror Lake. So far, our search for the three-toed woodpecker had uncovered a few gray jays, a pair of pine grosbeaks, a couple of Clark's nutcrackers, the usual juncos, a lumbering snowshoe hare and more than a few mosquitoes.
Hiking quietly through the early morning, we had passed an abundance of the scorched and dead trees the three-toed woodpecker favors, but we had not seen a woodpecker. And though we had driven into the Uintas specifically to see this bird, we tried to be philosophical about being skunked.
Glenn Barlow, a Fruit Heights birder, expounded a theory of how the woodpeckers probably move on soon after fledging their young.
I had just begun lying about what a great hike it had been and how the mosquitos weren't that bad at all, when we heard it: the brief "drumming" of a three-toed woodpecker.
Turning my head from side to side, I tried to pin down exactly where the hollow sound of beak on timber was coming from. Through the trees I could glimpse a group of dead trees a couple hundred yards away. "There," I pointed.
For once, I was right.
Tough to spot: The three-toed woodpecker is special to birders mainly because it is difficult to find. In birding jargon, it is "uncommon." More to the point, it lives in the High Uintas forest, which is inaccessible for eight snowbound months a year.
The three-toed woodpecker ranges across the northern parts of North America and Europe, but is hard to find everywhere, says Anne Hobbs, of the Cornell Ornithological Laboratory. "When it is found, it's in difficult terrain."
"They are a bird people don't see all the time," explained Mark Stackhouse, a professional bird guide based in Utah. "That forest looks really uniform to you and I, but you can never be certain where you'll find a three-toed woodpecker. It's a needle in a big haystack."
Stackhouse regularly takes out-of-state clients into the Uintas to find a handful of birds, including the three-toed woodpecker. "Every year, it's a crapshoot on where you are going to find them."
The woodpecker's population worldwide is in decline, according to Cornell's extensive database. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Utah's Department of Wildlife Resources list it as a sensitive species. The U.S. Forest Service has listed it as a management indicator species, and limits logging in its habitat.
A big part of the bird's problem is its specialized tastes. It favors beetles and grubs that live under the bark of dead or burned trees. Modern forestry practices, including fire suppression and salvage logging of burned and diseased trees, eliminate the bird's food source and breeding environment.
While still far from tumbling into the category of the now-famous ivory-billed woodpecker, until recently thought extinct, the three-toed can seem extinct.
At least it did to us.
The dark, starling-sized bird tends to not move around much, making it easily overlooked. "They can be challenging even in places where there is a fair number of them," says Stackhouse.
About those three toes: Most woodpeckers have four powerful toes that along with their stiff tail, give them leverage to chip away at trees. "Other woodpeckers have two toes forward and two back, but the three-toed just has three forward," says Merrill Webb, who does field research on the woodpecker for the U.S. Forest Service, adding that because the bird pays little attention to humans, "Sometimes, I've gotten close enough to see the three toes."
Keeping track: Barlow and I separated, circling the lake in an ambush strategy, following the intermittent bursts of drumming.
For me, seeing the three-toed woodpecker - and making a solid identification - would make it one of my "life birds." I could hang its memory on my birding trophy wall.
Barlow had already seen three-toed woodpeckers, but as a dedicated bird "lister"-meaning he keeps meticulous accounting of the birds he sees-this one was still important for his 2005 year list, county list and lord knows what other lists he keeps.
Barlow, 70, a retired Air Force officer and I had met for the first time that morning in a parking lot. I had queried an online birder list server, asking if anyone wanted to join me in hunting down the three-toed woodpecker. Barlow, a vastly more experienced Utah birder, was game.
It would be hard to find two people with less in common politically or personally. But we shared a passion for birds, and that was enough. Hooking up with another birder is like bumping into a stranger who turns out to be from your hometown. You've been to the same places, know the same people, share similar memories. Only in this case, everyone in the old neighborhood wears feathers.
While crawling through a downed aspen, I heard the drumming again. Looking up, I saw a woodpecker 50 yards away, busily tossing wood chips out of a hole in a dead tree.
Before I could bring up my binoculars, it disappeared inside and the hammering continued.
When the woodpecker popped out again, I had my 8x32 binoculars braced against the aspen. I ticked off the bird's distinguishing features: black head, white eye stripe, and the white back. My heart beat faster when I saw, or thought I saw, a glint of a gold cap.
I crept away to find Barlow, to share the bird - and as a witness to my lifer. We hunkered down on a log with a view of the woodpecker and confirmed the industrious three-toed was a male, apparently excavating a nest cavity. He was soon joined by a female.
Though hard to find, three-toed woodpeckers are not shy. We watched them for a half hour, then the female flew off above our heads, still apparently oblivious to us. When we looked back, the male was gone.
A second later, a hermit thrush hopped onto a sunlit snag a few feet in front of us and flicked its tail. As its name implies, the spotted-breasted thrush is seldom so theatrical.
Looking through his binoculars, Barlow whispered, "A perfect ending."
Three-toed woodpecker
Habitat: Burned-over coniferous forests.
Length: Up to 9 inches
Color: Striped sides, white back; yellow crown on males.
Feeds on: Wood-boring beetles
Migration: Year-round resident.
Nest: Hole in a dead conifer.
Factoid: Male attracts female by "drumming" on trees.
More info: http://www.utahbirds.org