38 Richard R. Repasky and Phillip D. Doerr 



METHODS 

 Study Area 



The study was conducted on the Sandhills Game Land, Richmond 

 Co., N.C. Uplands were predominantly longleaf pine (Pinus palustris)- 

 scrub oak (Quercus laevis, Q. marilandica, Q. incana, Q. margaretta)- 

 wiregrass (Aristida strict a) communities. Small stream margins and 

 seepage slopes were characterized by pond pine (Pinus serotina) 

 overstories and understories ranging from grass-sedge bog through 

 swamp hardwoods. The gameland had been managed primarily for the 

 production of timber and game. Longleaf pine had been harvested on a 

 100-year rotation and regenerated by seed tree cuts. Pond pine had been 

 managed similarly but on an 80-year rotation. Prescribed burning had 

 taken place on a 5-year rotation, except in northern bobwhite (Colinus 

 virginianus) management areas, which had been burned on a 1- to 2- 

 year rotation. Areas under the long burning rotation had dense 

 hardwood understories, whereas the more frequently burned areas had 

 open, park-like understories. A general description of the vegetation of 

 the Sandhills region has been presented by Wells and Shunk (1931). 



Home Ranges 



Two family groups of red-cockaded woodpeckers (group A and B) 

 were randomly chosen from four family groups that were located within 

 an area that was not to be logged during the study. All individuals in 

 each group were color-banded. Once each month from August 1979 

 through July 1980, we followed one group for five continuous days of 

 dawn-to-dusk tracking. Thus, each group was followed six times. When 

 a group split while it was being tracked, we continued to follow the 

 subgroup with the adult male. Locations taken at 5-minute intervals 

 were recorded on an aerial photograph (1:12000). We also made zero- 

 one scan samples (Altmann 1974) of behavior at 5-minute intervals, 

 yielding an average of 747 observations per tracking period. Behaviors 

 were categorized as foraging, resting, preening, and social conflict. We 

 defined home ranges as the convex polygons enclosing all locations 

 (Odum and Kuenzler 1955), and we estimated year-round home range 

 for each group. Territories were defined by plotting territorial conflicts. 



The resource base that we assumed to be available to each group 

 was encompassed within its year-round home range. That assumption 

 provided liberal estimates of resource availability, because convex 

 polygons include areas of limited use and areas outside of territorial 

 boundaries. Therefore, our assumption avoided the tautology of defining 

 resource availability based on group locations and then testing for 

 habitat selection with those same locations (Johnson 1980). Additionally, 

 extraterritorial foraging may be important even if it occurs within the 



