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Expert and amateur bird watchers sometimes talk about their “spark bird,” the feathered creature that marks the origin of their avian fascination. For ornithologist Eric Walters, Ph.D., that spark bird was a whale.

“My goal was to become a marine biologist,” said Dr. Walters, professor of biological sciences and associate dean for faculty affairs for the College of Sciences at Old Dominion University. 

A former advisor’s unfortunate experience with lost research data set Dr. Walters, a native of Canada, on the path to become an internationally recognized expert in the field of ornithology, specifically in the study of acorn woodpeckers at the Hastings Natural History Reservation in Carmel Valley, California.

Monarch Magazine caught up with Dr. Walters to learn more about his study subject — the bird whose raucous cackle inspired the cartoon character Woody Woodpecker — and the research that’s held his fascination since 2006.

So, you haven’t always been an ornithologist?

My goal was to become a marine biologist, who focuses on veterinary care of marine mammals. I got into the marine biology part — I really liked that — and I wasn’t so hot on vet school. I went to the University of Victoria in British Columbia, which is near Puget Sound, and that’s where I started my marine career. I got a summer job working at this aquarium looking after fish. Then, I made my way up to marine mammals and became a trainer. I trained sea lions, fur seals, harbor seals and then killer whales. 

How did you transition from a whale guy to a bird guy? 

The whole story goes back to this place called Sable Island, which is many miles off the east coast of Nova Scotia. My master’s advisor, when he was a student, was out there studying seals. At the end of the field season, as the aircraft was taking off, the cargo door opens and this great big chest with all his data and everything falls into the ocean. He gets back to the mainland, and his advisor says, “Well, you’ve lost the entire set of data. Is there anything else you can study out there?” And, my advisor says, “There are birds still there.” 

So, he goes back, and he starts studying birds. From that point on, my advisor studied birds, and he studied marine mammals. When I approached him in Victoria, I knew him from the marine mammal side. We had something lined up, and the funding fell through. He said, “I have this bird project on woodpeckers — would you be interested?” 

The whole switch for me, from marine mammals to birds, was simply an artifact of his experience losing this trunk out of his aircraft many decades earlier. I left marine mammals, and I became this bird guy. 

How are acorn woodpeckers similar to the whales you once studied? 

These woodpeckers live in family groups. They’re not matrilineal, but the offspring stay with their parents. They move together as a family, and they cooperatively breed. In that sense, it was very similar to the killer whales I was working with. They have complex social systems.

Why is your research important?

People always wonder, “What could you learn by studying birds that would help humans?” One of those things is, we’re learning about cooperation and why so many societies of animals cooperate in different ways. What are the benefits? Why has it evolved? 

The woodpeckers have large family groups, and they have offspring that stay with their parents for sometimes more than a decade. It’s much like today’s society where kids stay home with their parents longer than they did in the old days. Maybe it’s because they can’t get a job, but maybe it’s because they’re learning new things and they’re building up their resources so they can eventually head off and be independent. The woodpeckers do the same thing. They stay at home, and they’re learning skills like how to feed, how to care for young, how to defend the territory and how to look for predators. 

Once they have achieved these skills, they move off, and now they’re ready. There’s lots of parallels, I think, between what humans are doing and the whales and the woodpeckers. 

The Hastings Reservation study of acorn woodpeckers started in 1968 and is one of the longest studies of birds in the world. What are the benefits of longevity when it comes to data collection? 

When we get grants from the National Science Foundation, these are usually three years, and we think about what we learned in three years versus what we’ve learned in nearly 60 years. You learn a lot more the longer your study goes, and you expect to see more rare events. Sometimes, the rare things that happen can have a huge effect on the population.

For example, there were no fires in our study until around 2017. We went more than 40 years before we had a fire that occurred, while we were studying the woodpeckers. Five fires have occurred in the last 10 years. Now, we have a baseline; we know what the woodpeckers were doing over all that time, and we see what they’re doing after the fires.

 

How have fires affected the birds? 

One of the big studies showed that it’s not always the fire that matters. We did a cool study where we showed the residual effect of smoke, and smoke that moves many hundreds of miles away from fires. We showed how the woodpeckers changed their movement patterns. They were slowing down, they weren’t moving, and they were staying home.

You received the Virginia Society of Ornithology’s Mitchell A. Byrd Award, which recognizes outstanding scientific achievement in your field. You’re the first recipient from Old Dominion University, and your nomination was supported by former students. How did that feel? 

I was shocked. I had no inkling about it at all. I got this message saying, “You have won it, and could you appear at our meeting to accept the award?” I found out that all these colleagues that I worked with and these other students that I’d worked with had written letters that supported my application, and I was totally oblivious to it all.

What is unique about the Walters Lab? 

Our lab is diverse in what we study — that has to do with my students. My philosophy is I don’t try to tell students what to work on, I try to facilitate what they work on. I want them to drive the system. They come up with projects, and sometimes (it has nothing) to do with their ultimate plan, but with funding. Sometimes, people switch gears and change systems altogether. You end up with a diverse system of students who work on different things.

Talk about the next generation of ornithologists — who are they? 

The core behind each of our interns has not really changed over time. They’re all individuals who want to change the world. They want to learn new things so they can make a difference. And, they’re not there for the money; they’re there for the experience. And, they’re there because they know we care about their future, and we want to give them all the skills they need. I always tell people that I feel more like a life coach than a professor.

How has the University supported your research? 

They’ve provided flexibility. They’ve allowed me to work my teaching schedule around the field season. I do my research in California, and it makes us a world-class institution. These are field-based projects that bring significant recognition to Old Dominion University; they understand that and support that work. 

Your lab also studies the effects of urbanization on birds. What can the average person do to help local and migratory bird species?  

This area is one of the biggest migratory pathways in North America. There are reasons that birds go to habitat patches, and sometimes it has nothing to do with the quality — it has to do with happenstance or geography.

Birds are really good at finding patches. If there's nothing around and you have the one patch, they're going to be attracted to that. You might provide refuge for them when there's a predator; you might provide them with food or a place just to rest when they're traveling. Or, you might encourage resident birds to take up shop. Birds that live in urban environments are more adaptable, and they're trying to navigate poor habitat and good habitat; it's always a mix.

Also, trying to create habitat not just for terrestrial, more traditional birds, but some of the aquatic birds that might be using it. We're in a unique area where you could modify your yard to support things like herons, shorebirds and ducks. A lot of people don't have that privilege.

 

 

 

 

Did you know?

• Acorn woodpeckers forage for insects in the air rather than in rotting logs.
• If they can’t catch insects, they hoard as many as 10,000 acorns in tree granaries.
• They have large family groups, and offspring can stay with their parents for more than a decade.