Red-cockaded woodpeckers once flitted through the trees of Hitchcock Woods, looking for insects and berries to eat and mature longleaf pines in which to excavate their nesting cavities.
It's been years, however, since any of the birds, which are on the federal list of endangered species, have lived there.
Randy Wolcott and his fellow members of the Hitchcock Woods Foundation's Board of Trustees want the red-cockaded woodpeckers, which also are known as RCWs, to return, and they're committed to doing whatever it takes to achieve that goal.
"We're working toward it," Wolcott said, "and while it hasn't been a great success yet, we are making great strides."
Earlier this year, Hitchcock Woods became part of the South Carolina Red-cockaded Woodpecker Safe Harbor Program, which is a cooperative project involving the United States Fish and Wildlife Service and the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources.
Wolcott was the point man in guiding the Foundation through the process required to make Hitchcock Woods eligible for Safe Harbor status.
"You have to get a baseline survey done to see how many colonies of RCWs are on your property," Wolcott said. "I proposed to the board to have this survey completed, which involved a big expenditure, and they got behind me and hired an ornithologist to walk through the entire Woods. He came back and said, 'You have plenty of areas that would be suitable for nesting colonies and you have suitable foraging areas, but there are no red-cockaded woodpeckers here.'"
Another step involved the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources.
"They did a survey of our land, and they found that everything we do is beneficial to the habitat and to the birds, so we were admitted to the Safe Harbor Program," Wolcott said.
Next, the Hitchcock Woods staff needs to make an inventory of the areas in the urban forest that would be capable of supporting a colony of red-cockaded woodpeckers.
Then, according to Wolcott, the Foundation must find someone qualified to make holes in mature longleaf pines in those areas and put special boxes in them to make it easier for any birds that might fly into Hitchcock Woods to nest there.
"You have to have a permit to install those boxes because it must be done correctly," Wolcott said. "We could hire a contractor or we could get the guys who work here trained to do it."
Wolcott is optimistic that red-cockaded woodpeckers will come back to one day to Hitchcock Woods because a controlled burning program has created the type of environment that they prefer.
"A lot of people have told me that when the forest was managed differently, the understory grew up too high, so the RCWs moved away," he said.
There are colonies of red-cockaded woodpeckers at the Savannah River Site, and some of their members could find their way to Hitchcock Woods on their own. In another possible scenario, birds in jeopardy elsewhere could be relocated to Hitchcock Woods by wildlife officials because the forest is in the Safe Harbor Program.
"I'm very proud of our stewardship of the Woods and what has been accomplished," Wolcott said.
Dede Biles is a general assignment reporter for the Aiken Standard.