The location or center of activity is very isolated and very hard to access, beautiful in it's remoteness.

 

Lots of alligators inhabit this place and they are very dense populations. They are not afraid to approach humans and even though I am very comfortable around alligators this place makes me nervous to some degree.

 

The woods are dense and navigation on ground is difficult to impossible merely because of nowhere to walk because of the density of trees and foliage.

 

Navigation is done on waterways, by canoe, and much walking through the water is nescessary to bring the canoe through fallen timber.

 

In some places it looks like dusk even in the middle of the day because of the canopy.

 

The area of nesting and roosting is very small, 1 or 2 miles long and wide. The area is surrounded by vast forests, much pine, and scrub.

 

The birds easily fly out of the dense area to feed and foriage in the pine forests. I have seen the birds up to 20 miles from this dense area. I believe there are birds that have fledged and dispersed and are eaking a living in less suitable areas.

 

All of this land is under government control and has limited controlled logging in some areas. No logging or human activity threatens this dense area and I have never encountered a human in here, indeed, the locals in the surrounding woods think I am nuts for going in.

 

Often, it is easy to find the beetle grubs they seek out. The bark scaled trees are found in clusters. While it is widely accepted that these birds feed on recently killed trees, I have found that they feed also on live trees that harbor certain larvae, larvae that will ultimately kill off the trees.

 

It is easy to distinguish trees scaled by birds as opposed to lightning struck trees or dead trees that simply lose bark.