Woodpeckers in EAB Ash

[grappleyarder]

Three Pileated and one Hairy (I think). Sounded like a team of guys with hatchets. The strikes were all oblique to the stems, just stripping the outer bark off.

I read a little more on the life cycle of the EAB.

"The larva will excavate its pre-pupal chamber either approximately 0.5 inches into the outer sapwood or into the outer bark. The thickness of the bark will influence which happens. On thicker-barked trees, the pre-pupae may be found in the bark; on thinner-barked trees, they may be found in the outer sapwood."

Must be quite a feast!

 

[matdand]

You guys better gear up next year... trees a comin' down!

 

[Tom Dunlap]

Right behind EAB there will be a rise in the woodpecker population!

 

[mattfr12]

You guys better gear up next year... trees a comin' down!

I'm in PA and we are taking hundreds a year out even last year was super high. Pine/ spruce used to be like 40% of our removals now Ash is like 70%. Pain in the neck to clean up, trees explode when they hit the ground into thousands of peices. Alot of shovel work if you start dropping them. They plug the bottom feed roller up on our chippers all the time because of the shards you get. major pain having to reverse the feed wheels every 5 min to unplug it. We are hoping the new terex chipper with only a top feed wheel corrects this problem.

 

[grappleyarder]

Right behind EAB there will be a rise in the woodpecker population!

With being told that the EAB had no natural predators I had assumed that there was no point in the lifecycle that was being utilized.

This appears to occur only on the larger trees, predominantly the south side (maybe). At the rate they were working I'll bet this group of Ash were fully stripped in half a day. Piles of bark at the base of each tree.