My earliest experience with a snag happened when I was a college student rambling through a longleaf pine-turkey oak sandhill forest. I discovered a Brown-headed Nuthatch coming and going from a small cavity in a dead turkey oak tree that stood no taller than me. It was easy to watch and photograph at that height.
That experience sold me on the value of snags.
Snags, either standing dead trees or partially dead trees, provide cavities for nesting birds such as woodpeckers, owls, chickadees, bluebirds, titmice, wrens, nuthatches, wood ducks and others. In addition, snags provide habitat and food for all sorts of other creatures from beetles to frogs to denning mammals like raccoons and opossums. They also serve as perching and roosting sites.
When snags fall to the ground, they are called logs and further provide habitat for fungi, spiders, beetles, termites, ants, grubs, worms and snails, not to mention the reptiles and amphibians, birds, mice and other mammals that feed on them. Decaying logs are essential to the health of our forest and backyard soils and nutrient cycling.
Dead trees and branches are important to forests, but they are also important in our own suburban and urban yards. Homeowners may consider allowing some dead trees to rot and decay in place, as long as there are no safety concerns. In our urban Tallahassee yard, we have had our arborist cut dead pines at 20 feet and these snags have become refuges for wildlife.
When our children were in early elementary school, they were excited to find a pileated woodpecker hammering away at eye level on a large pine snag. They “sneaked” up on it to take a photo. What an experience for young children. Now 25 years later, the remnant of this snag that eventually became a log on our urban woodland floor is still there, nearly decayed to rich soil.
There are a few other things you can do to enrich wildlife habitat concerning dead wood. You can create snags by girdling live trees, especially if they are overcrowded in a wooded situation. Also allow some downed logs to decay over the years.
Barred owl nestlings in a rotted tree trunk. (Photo: Sandy Beck)
Smaller diameter dead wood (branches and limbs) can also be collected and placed in a mound to create a brush pile where birds can seek shelter and escape hawks and other predators and where insects and other wildlife can live.
My husband, Jody Walthall, even “planted” a dead well-branched cedar snag in our bird garden to provide perching places for birds because our 25-year old blue beech tree, the main feature of the garden, blew over in a hurricane.
We planted a young blue beech, but it will take time for this tree to provide much perching space. Likewise, friends Vanessa and Richard Crisler “planted” a snag by their backyard pond for dragonflies to perch on. Imagine their surprise when they found an immature bald eagle perched there. In Betton Hills!