Note that when RCW adults enter a cavity, they usually peak inside first. At Noxubee, tin plating first was used around the base of nest trees. Rat snakes have been known to climb over a two-foot wide ban. The snakes will often become tangled in the nets. Richardson is beginning a process of radio tagging rat snakes to learn more about their habits.
Artifical inserts are successful.
Obviously, waiting thirty years for a tree to rot from the inside out is too long to wait for a suitable nesting cavity. The solution at Noxubee is an insert, which looks like a bluebird house put into the trunk of a loblolly pine. Red-cockades have taken readily to the inserts, making it possible to move birds to new clusters by providing homes for them in three or four pines.