The signature charcoal-colored back of a black-backed woodpecker provides the perfect camouflage for the bird found fluttering around burnt woods in Central Oregon.

But the woodpecker may not be as attached to forest charred by fire as has long been believed, said a Sisters birding guide and researcher.

“Black backs are not dependent on burned forests,” said Stephen Shunk, owner and lead guide for Paradise Birding.

His opinion goes against the concerns of a quartet of conservation groups, which are calling for possible Endangered Species Act protections for the woodpecker.

A study Shunk’s involved with in California leads him to believe the birds move to where they can find wood-boring beetles to eat, he said, regardless of whether the wood they’re in has been touched by flames.

“Where there are the right kind of beetles, the woodpecker thrives,” Shunk said Thursday in Bend, during an East Cascades Audubon Society Birders’ Night presentation.

Justin Augustine, an attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity in San Francisco, disagrees with Shunk’s observations about the woodpeckers.

“They heavily rely on (burned forest) and need that area for nesting and foraging,” he said.

The Center for Biological Diversity, which is headquartered in Arizona, is among four conservation groups that filed a May 2012 petition about the bird with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The other groups are the John Muir Project of Earth Island Institute, Blue Mountains Biodiversity Project and the Biodiversity Conservation Alliance. They are asking the agency to conduct a review as to whether the woodpecker deserves ESA protection.

While the agency was supposed to respond to the petition within three months, it still hasn’t.

The delay is the result of a backlog of review requests, said Robert Moler, assistant field supervisor for external affairs for the Sacramento Field Office of the Fish and Wildlife Service.

“The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has more workload than we have personnel,” Moler said.

He said the agency is close to making the determination as to whether a full review of the black-backed woodpecker is warranted.

Augustine said the groups who filed the petition are preparing to file a lawsuit if the agency doesn’t announce a decision soon.

The U.S. Forest Service has identified the black-backed woodpecker as a species to watch in the Deschutes National Forest, but there is much to learn about the nomadic bird, said Lauri Turner, forest wildlife biologist for the Deschutes. She said there is not enough information yet to determine whether the bird should be federally listed.

“We just don’t know how much they move on the landscape to determine that at this point,” Turner said.

The groups calling for a Fish and Wildlife Service review of the bird say its populations are down around the West, a result of habitat loss by salvage logging.

While advocating for keeping snags in burned forests rather than cutting them for timber, Shunk countered the claim that the woodpecker is becoming rare.

“I would say it is a stretch to say the black-backed woodpecker in Oregon is in jeopardy,” he said.

He said he’s led birding excursions for 15 years and regularly sees the bird.

Black-backed woodpecker

Scientific name: Picoides arcticus

Characteristics: Sooty black back feathers camouflage against charred trees. Males have a yellow crown patch. Males and females have three toes, rather than the typical four for birds. Medium-sized, about 9 inches long.

Breeding: Digs out cavities in trees for nests in spring; eggs typically hatch by early summer.

Habitat: Burned coniferous forests

Food: Mainly beetle larvae

Source: Cornell Lab of Ornithology, American Ornithologists’ Union

Photo courtesy Kris Falco / Paradise Birding