was it bugs or woodpeckers?

[Enrico Carini]

This happened over the course of a day, the day before it seemed to be a perfectly healthy tree but what do I know.

We've been losing a lot of smaller Fir and the property to bugs but when the woodpeckers moved in on this tree it looked like they were after ants. Two months now since the woodpeckers ripped all the bark off and the tree is completely dead.

My question is: was it the woodpeckers that killed the tree or would the tree have died anyway from whatever the woodpeckers were eating? Do ants kill Fir trees?

 

[Stihlbillie]

Woodpecker

 

[Enrico Carini]

Thanks. I had a feeling that was the case, just want to know my enemy

 

[ATH]

Woodpeckers don't Peck that much for the fun of it....they were after bugs that were in the tree. That much suggests more than ants - possibly a bark beetle.

 

[Westboastfaller]

Just Google Douglas fire Beetle
British Columbia Ministry of Forest (MOF)
Have most all the info you need.

Douglas fir Beetle and Douglas fir pole Beetle may share the same host tree. the pole Beetle hits are higher in the stem.
Their galleries will be diferent as well.

If you want to look at the Beetle you are going to have to cut the sapsucker's stomach open...lol

Just take a sharp little hatchet where you see the fine dust (pitch tubes) or in the case of this tree because it's so hammered; just about anywhere you peel the bark you will see the vertical galleries. They will be eack about a ft long dug by the female. The male comes in behind her and pushes the dust out. She lays eggs the length of that gallery and the larva feeds on the Cambium lays through the course of the winter and spring in a horizontal direction girdling the tree and eventually severing the food supply creating death to the tree.
It's multiple hits that do it in. You will be able to see the lavra galleries. I believe I could see them from the pic.

We fall "trap trees" for them as they go to the downed trees. then weak trees. When nothing else is available then they hit healthy trees. It's more common in BC in the Fir interior regions. They will hit Larch (Tamarack) also.
after the summer late spring early summer fly then the following winter 'we' would prob and then burn the infested trap trees. I have only been involved with the Falling of trap trees. Mountain Pine Beetle (MPB) I have alot more on hands experience with. With MPB, its the Sapsucker from the same Excavator family as the 'woodpecker' that strips the bark. I'm not sure about coast Fir attracts.
The Sapsucker can hear them moving under the bark.
Sometimes a heathy tree can win and product 'pitch outs' and kill the Beetle.
You should see 'pitch outs' on most hits trees. It will be a ball of pitch and no sawdust. Its said it can take two years to kill a Fir so if trap trees are use to start you may use the ones that are hit and holding colour still? They fly in may and June here.
Possibly earlier there. If I'm 100% right it may be something that needs to be done right now if its not to late for the year
You should be able to see exit hole at the end of the larva galleries (horizontal galleries) if they are starting to fly.
Pealing hit trees can be done also in fire season but then you can't use the tree as a trap tree

 

[Enrico Carini]

I assumed it was beetles at first and didn't shoot any of the woodpeckers. Beetles get a lot of healthy Fir trees around here because of the drought but they're usually under 8" in diameter. When it's quiet you can find the trees that have beetles just by listening, you can hear them chewing and you will find sawdust under the infected trees. First the top goes red and then the rest of the tree is dead within months to a year. MBP is taking out some really big pines on my neighbors property but she refuses to do anything about it.

This tree went very differently, not saying it wasn't beetles it just really seemed like it was the woodpeckers. This is the first large Fir I've lost ever (probably about 24"), died in little more than a month and from the bottom up. Can't find any pitch tubes, never heard any chewing, I never saw dust on the bark or anything. When the woodpeckers came the trunk was covered in ants.

I plan to cut and mill the tree so I guess if it was beetles I'll see their tunnels inside

 

[Westboastfaller]

The Beetles make shallow vertical galleries about a ft long along the sapwood of the tree. If you have Pine that was affected by MPB from a year ago or longer you can plainly so the galleries.
If it's MPB then it's always in a letter J pattern and she starts from the bottom.
You will see smaller galleries going in the opposite direction going around the tree that was caused by the larva as it matures it's chases the food eating the Cambium layer and cutting off the trees nutrition supply. If there is loose bark still left, you will probably find some dead adult Beatles still there.
So the Beetles can be probed with a little hatchet by skinning vertical strips of bark. The Fir Beetle galleries will be bigger. A big reason why the Excavator birds can knock the bark off so fast is because the cells are dead and the separation process happens quickly. Fir does have thick bark and it doesn't look like the birds striped it to the
Wood? Hard to tell from my phone. No doubt they got what they were after.

It could have other things going on with it
It looks unusually black on the bark that LOOKS intact. Black root rot? That would kill the tree. Heart rot pathogens may have come through a wound at one point. That would explain all the ants but they don't affect the Cambium layer of the tree infact they protect their home and kill predictors and vegetation that may take nutrients from plants in natural hollow stems that host them. You may see fuiting bodies (Conks) on the tree indicating heart rot disease. As its taught in my wildlife/ Danger Tree Assessor's course of BC, the rot is generally 2 metres above or two metres below the Conks. You can sound it with an axe of vertical bore with saw. We may use an increment borer that keeps the core in tact for a measurement then use a formula to calculate the percentage of volume missing. If it dosen't meet the saftey criteria then the tree would be removed.

What do you mean you can hear the Beetles chewing? No? Teach me that trick.
You are never going to starve that's for sure. Haha

 

[Enrico Carini]

No lie, the beetles make noise when they bore. When it's quiet you can hear it within 50ft of the tree. It sounds like carving wood 5-7 strokes at a time. It took me months to figure out what that noise was

The tree has never had any fungus that exhibited fruiting bodies. I'm gonna mill it and see what's inside.