There is a small pile of sawdust at the base of a huge fir tree in my yard. There are also small holes with red sawdust around them all the way up and around the trunk. None of this was present last fall. Does this mean woodpeckers? Carpenter ants? That the tree is dead????
It is being bored by something. Boring insects such as beetles may in fact be attracted in numbers to trees that are already distressed by some other circumstance, such as drought or climate change. A much-publicized example is the recent extensive losses in Alaska. Tracts of conifers killed by beetle outbreaks can also be seen down here, in this region.
