Pileated woodpecker enlivens winter landscape

By: 
Cathy Carnes
Columnist

Our suet feeder has a new guest, a pileated woodpecker. This is a surprise as we normally see and hear this bird working away at our old apple tree or one of the nearby utility poles and filling the yard with its determined drilling as it chisels away at old wood.

The bird cuts a dashing figure with its bright red crest and three white stripes on its neck that set off the black feathers of its wings and back. The male has a red cheek stripe which the female lacks. This woodpecker is large, nearly the size of a crow, hard to miss if it is in your neighborhood.

According to “What’s it Like to Be a Bird” by David Allen Sibley, these woodpeckers are engineered for a life of climbing, drilling and probing to find food in old trees. You’ve likely seen the long, rectangular holes carved by this woodpecker. Its excavations are made by strong blows from its stout bill delivered by a long flexible neck that puts real force into the drilling — think about wielding a hammer to pound a stubborn nail.

The toes, arranged with two facing forward and two back, allow it to tightly grip tree bark. Its stiff tail acts as a prop, holding its body out from the tree trunk. Those tree-burrowing insects haven’t much of a chance when pursued by this well-equipped woodpecker.

While its long, stout bill is an excellent excavating tool, its very long and flexible tongue is what’s used to seek out and procure food. The tip of the tongue is barbed, sticky and so flexible that it can follow twisting tunnels in which it traps prey against the walls and pries them from their hiding places deep within the tree.

According to the The Cornell Lab All About Birds (AAB) website, the pileated woodpecker’s favored meal is carpenter ants. They also eat other ants, beetle larvae, termites, flies, spruce budworm, caterpillars, cockroaches and grasshoppers. Wild fruits and nuts are on their menu when available including hackberries, blackberries, sumac berries, poison ivy, holly, dogwood, crabapples and elderberry. Occasionally, they find a meal at your backyard bird feeders.

We love hearing the call of the pileated woodpecker — its loud, high wuk-wuk-wuk notes rise in pitch and speed, then quickly fade to a sudden stop. According to the AAB website, this call indicates alarm or can draw attention to a territorial boundary. We’re happy to think that our yard may be part of a well-guarded pileated woodpecker territory.

In addition to hearing their calls, you may also hear their drumming. According to Sibley, woodpeckers drum on trees to communicate. The pileated’s slow, rolling drumming lasts about 3 seconds. In late winter, males drum to establish and defend a territory. Both sexes drum as part of their courtship rituals and either sex may drum to solicit mating, to call a mate or when there is an intruder near a nest. Listen for the drumming come late winter and spring.

According to the AAB website, pileated woodpecker pairs are faithful, staying together on their territory all year-round. They typically excavate their nest cavity in large dead trees. The entrance is rectangular in shape and the cavity from 10-24 inches deep and lined with wood chips, making a secure, cozy home for the one brood of three to five young they raise per year.

Pileated woodpeckers can be found year-round in most of the eastern United States, southern Canada, the Rocky Mountains of Idaho and in some of the Pacific Northwest. They inhabit a variety of mature deciduous or mixed deciduous-coniferous woodlands across the country — including the majestic western hemlock stands of the Northwest, beech and maple forests of New England and cypress swamps of the Southeast. They also make their homes in woodland patches and large trees found in and around suburban areas, habitats present in many of our neighborhoods.

Alan Haney in his book, “Jewels of Nature,” likens the Midwest population of pileated woodpeckers to that of our forest history. The pileated became rare with the logging of the forest in the early 1900s, but then populations expanded as the forest recovered. Their numbers have increased by a factor of four since the 1960s and continue to increase, making it all the more likely that some will be living near you.

Listen and watch for the pileated woodpecker; they add a dash of color and awe to gray wintry days and are a joy to hear and see.


Cathy Carnes is a retired biologist in Oconto who worked with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Green Bay Field Office and, prior to that, with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Regulatory Branch in Buffalo, New York. As endangered species coordinator for the USFWS, she helped conserve and recover federally listed threatened and endangered species in Wisconsin.