For the Birds: Pileated Woodpeckers — the Large, Impressive Ones

Male Pileated with juvie female.
Photo by Craig Kerns

By Christine Southwick

Which local woodpecker makes large rectangular or oval holes in dead trees that later are used by other birds, small mammals and other wild creatures?

If you said the Pileated Woodpecker, you would be correct.

The first impression of this woodpecker is that it is as large as a crow, and makes a really loud drumming sound. It also has a loud “laughing” call, similar to the Northern Flicker, only a little more evenly modulated.

One of these long-term monogamous pair may claim your neighborhood as home; if so, consider yourself lucky. These impressive birds will catch your attention with their calls, drumming on trees or poles, undulating flight, and willingness to come to your suet, or an old telephone pole along your street.

Pileated eat lots of carpenter ants, and other wood-boring insects, and prefer habitats with larger trees. They will also eat fruit. Pileated will often glean apples during winter, and I have seen them eat service berries right off the branches.

Female Pileated excavating  nest cavity. Photo by Doug Parrott

Males and females look similar with bright red crests; but the male has a red moustachial stripe, the females a black stripe.

Pileated are dedicated parents with both taking turns excavating the nest, brooding the eggs, and feeding their young. For another two or three months after they fledge, the parents continually teach them how to forage. In fact it is really a delight to watch a parent teaching its pinkish-orange punk-headed youngster how to maneuver its large body onto a suet feeder in such a way that its long tongue can extract tasty suet tidbits .

Male Pileated using tongue to extract bugs from tree.
Photo by John Riegsecker

Pileated need large rotten trees in which to create their nesting cavities. It can take as long as six weeks for the pair to excavate a nest large enough for four young woodpeckers. They have large strong feet; are strong flyers; and will often eat bugs low on both live and dead trees.

Even as adaptable as these woodpeckers are, habitat loss of old-growth trees and other forests with large trees has caused the Pileated Woodpecker to be listed as a “species-at-risk” and a probable candidate for the endangered species listing in Washington state.

If you have a large dead tree on your property, don’t cut down the last ten or twenty feet. Make a snag, and I promise you will attract cavity nesters, maybe even a pair of these impressive Pileated Woodpeckers.

Christine Southwick is on the Board of the Puget Sound Bird Observatory and is their Winter Urban Color-banding Project Manager. She is a National Wildlife Federation Certified Wildlife Habitat Steward, having completed their forty hour class. We're happy that she's sharing her expertise with us about the birds in our backyards.

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