Drew Beamer

2025 was a great year. I was fortunate enough to take my first solo birding trip with at their lodge in the beautiful Valle de Anton. Keel-billed Toucans were on my list of species I wanted to get great photos of while there, and they did not disappoint! This individual was incredibly cooperative and visited the lodge's fruit feeders, allowing for some fantastic looks.

Today I took the chance to drive out to Weymouth Woods Sandhills Nature Preserve in Southern Pines about 2 hours outside of Charlotte to see if I could spot a Red-cockaded Woodpecker. This is a species endemic to the southeastern United States, with somewhere in the ballpark of 15,000 individuals remaining in the wild. I was fortunate enough to see a family group, exhibiting some of the unique behaviors that make this woodpecker so special.

This species is a specialist of pine savannah habitats, which have greatly declined since the 1700s. It's estimated that the RCWO population today is just 1% of what it was 300 years ago. Conservation efforts have thankfully led to relative stability in the species population/breeding group count since the 1980s.