Habitat use of the three-toed woodpecker in central Europe during the breeding period

Considerable differences observed in the home-range size of individual three-toed woodpeckers (Picoides tridactylus) may be linked to variation in resource availability. We used radio-telemetry to test this hypothesis in an alpine mountain forest in southeastern Germany between 1994 and 2000. Stepwise backward multiple-regression showed that adaptive kernel home-range size using 95% use distribution (n=24 woodpeckers) was positively related to forest extent and tree-species diversity. Conversely, we found smaller home ranges with increasing density of potential cavity trees, and with increasing dbh-range of trees at breast height. The habitat variables shown to effect home range selection were attributes of mature boreal forests. This implied that maintaining a boreal-like habitat (i.e. spruce-dominated autochthonous forests including their natural disturbance regime) would be the best option for successful conservation of the alpine subspecies of the three-toed woodpecker.