This photograph was taken at the Upper Mississippi River National Wildlife and Fish Refuge, near McGregor, Iowa. Throughout the refuge, which stretches for 260 miles along the upper Mississippi River, there are numerous small channels that are perfect for canoeing: weak currents, calm waters, and gentle shorelines that are good for beaching a canoe.
This photo was taken in the late 1990s. Effects from the Great Flood of 1993 can be seen in the numerous stands of dead timber. In 1993, large areas of the river's floodplain were inundated for long periods of time during the summer growing season. Even flood-tolerant trees such as silver maple suffered mortality from have their bases under water for so long. Oaks and hickories faired even worse.
At the time that I took this photograph, I was gathering information for an article on red-headed woodpeckers, which use standing dead trees, also called "snags," for nesting and for storing caches of acorns over the winter. The scene shows how a disaster for one group of species (trees) may benefit another (woodpeckers), at least for a time.
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