Rfalconcam Forum

February 14, 2010

We were slowly driving along the Lackawaxen River, scanning the sycamore and pines for bald eagles when suddenly another bird materialized just a few feet from my face.

It was a pileated woodpecker, in a pose I'd never been lucky enough to witness before: flying right along with the car, 4 feet off the ground, at an arm's length from my driver's window.

I could clearly see its flaming-red crest; its 3-inch, chisel-like beak; its black body; white-striped face and neck; white wing patches; and red "mustache" that marked it as a male. Then it veered off the road and landed on a fallen log, giving me yet another unusual glimpse of this startlingly large woodpecker that generally hitches its way up the far sides of tree trunks, hidden from the eyes of humans.

This experience was one of many encounters I've been having with the great pileated woodpecker this winter — literally, on an almost daily basis.

I watched one fly repeatedly back and forth from an oak into a tall hemlock in late January and wondered what the bird was doing as it dangled upside down, 80 feet above the ground. The mystery was solved when I stood beneath the tree and was hit by wild grapes from a big vine that climbed to the top of the hemlock.

I've recently seen pileateds carving big holes in trees in Tobyhanna State Park, Skytop, Bushkill and even on my own property, and observed their piles of fresh wood chips on top of the snow beneath cavity-ridden trees throughout the Poconos. On several nature walks that I've conducted this winter, I teased apart their cylindrical droppings among the wood chips to show people their amazing contents — dozens of solid, undigested heads of carpenter ants.

The highlight, however, came at Skytop at the end of a mid-January nature walk. I heard the distinctive, wild "laugh" of a pileated woodpecker as we emerged into a clearing at the edge of a densely wooded wetland, and whispered to the crowd of 30 people that we might be lucky enough to see one of our region's most sought-after, impressive birds. As we crept toward the source of the sound, one person excitedly announced, "There it is!"

Once again, the woodpecker was doing something rather uncharacteristic. Instead of hammering into a tree, it was perched clumsily in the crown of a small 7-foot crab apple tree, gobbling down fruits as it wobbled from branch to branch with its wings flailing for balance. It was one of those rare occasions that naturalists dream about — giving dozens of people the opportunity (a first for most of them) to watch one of these normally elusive, shy birds at eye-level, only 20 feet away.

Why does this 19-inch woodpecker (the largest in North America unless the ivory-billed is proven to still survive in Florida or Arkansas) seem to be getting so common in recent years? After all, there was a time in the mid-20th century when ornithologists feared it would ultimately join its slightly larger southern cousin in extinction. But it surprised many people by gradually adapting to the maturing forests that were reclaiming the northern states, and even taking residence in the smaller suburban woodlands of residential areas.

While the ivory-billed woodpecker required the vanishing virgin bottomland forests of the Southeast to satisfy its specialized diet of big, wood-boring beetle grubs, the pileated's more flexible, varied fare of carpenter ants, grubs, beetles and fruits of poison ivy, sumac, wild grape and other woody plants enabled it to survive and increase its numbers as the forests returned to the eastern United States following the peak of the clear-cutting era in the late 1800s and early 1900s. At the same time, increased contact with people and legal protection caused the pileated to gradually lose its shyness.

However, there may be another, less welcome reason for the pileated woodpecker's more recent success and population increase in our area: dying, insect-infested trees.

There are stretches of roadside bordering Tobyhanna, Buck Hill Falls, South Sterling and Gouldsboro where one dead or dying beech tree after another has been excavated by pileated woodpeckers. The same goes for hemlocks throughout the lower elevations of the Poconos, as well as many large oaks and sugar maples in certain locations.

These trees, the victims of insect outbreaks such as beech bark disease, hemlock woolly adelgid, gypsy moth and forest tent caterpillar, respectively, have been transformed into easy sources of food for pileated woodpeckers that hammer into rotting, insect-infested wood.

I saw my first pileated woodpecker more than 35 years ago when I was a student at Cornell University. Our field natural history professor, Richard Fisher, told us there was a pair of these legendary, elusive birds nesting in a forest a few miles from campus. We drove there one Saturday and managed to just catch a glimpse of one flying through the dark forest, but it was enough to make an unforgettable first impression on this budding naturalist.

Little did I know that someday I'd be privileged to see this bird in my own yard, and — better yet — to show it to dozens of appreciative people.

May we never take for granted this magnificent woodpecker that somehow escaped the fate of its near-mythical southern relative, no matter how often we're fortunate enough to see one.

Captions: There are stretches of roadside bordering Tobyhanna, Buck Hill Falls, South Sterling and Gouldsboro where one dead or dying beech tree after another has been excavated by pileated woodpeckers.

Pileated woodpeckers pile up wood chips underneath the holes they make, searching for insects inside trees.

Pileated woodpeckers are 19 inches long and have 3-inch beaks.

Boy, they make big holes. I wouldn't want one interested in my house! :laugh:

Your not kiddin...beautiful birds though.

I have seen the pileated several times since moving into my house in 1994.  Each time has been 4 or 5 years apart and each time it was during the winter during a prolonged below average temperature time period.  I'm in a very urban area so needless to say, each time it's startled me to see them here (I'm in the NW suburbs of Atlanta).  With this winter being so cold, I'm surprised that I haven't seen any this winter. 

Last Monday 2/8, just down the road from home, we saw a pileated woodpecker flying into a tree.  The day before, I had heard him when taking snow pictures.  Strangely, it was the black and white flying under feathers that caught our attention - then the big bird with the bright red.

We have some on the hill behind our house and this fall one was in the trees along our driveway. They are so cool. I remember the first time I saw one close up they are huge.

They are awesome, I saw 2 while babysitting this past Summer.  (http://s10.rimg.info/b6b843d205df74075588632f9c2ec2d1.gif) (http://smiles.int-world.com/smile.103887.html)