Welcome to Wildlife Wednesday! There’s certainly no shortage of wildlife species in our region to discuss during our Wednesday get-togethers here, yet I sometimes struggle to pick one to cover. Earlier, I was banging my head against the wall trying to drum up a topic to write about for this week’s Wildlife Wednesday. I finally decided to hammer out a Wildlife Wednesday post about one of the biggest, boldest, and noisiest birds you can find in a northern California forest! Meet the Pileated Woodpecker, a colossal, crow-sized, avian carpenter!
Many of you are probably saying, “Wait a sec! How the heck do you pronounce Pileated?” Just like with tomatoes, some say “PIE-lee-ay-tid” and some say “PILL-ee-ay-tid.” Both are considered totally acceptable. Personally, I’ve always been in the “PILL-ee-ay-tid” camp, but you can pronounce it however your heart desires! The scientific name for the Pileated Woodpecker is Dryocopus pileatus, which breaks down into Greek and Latin roots meaning “tree striking” (Dryocopus) and “capped” (pileatus), referring to this bird’s dramatic red crest.
That brilliant red mohawk is more than just a fashion statement. It’s also a clue to the bird’s sex because the male’s red crest extends all the way down to the bill, whereas the female’s red crest just covers the back half of her head. Another way to distinguish between male and female Pileated Woodpeckers is to look at their malar stripe, the marking that extends from the base of the bill back along the cheek, looking like a mustache. Males have a red “mustache” malar stripe on their face, while females sport a black malar stripe. Both sexes have a mostly black body with bold white stripes running down their neck and a large white patch under each wing that’s visible in flight. At 16-19 inches long, the Pileated Woodpecker is roughly the size of an American Crow, making it North America’s largest woodpecker species!
This widely distributed species occurs throughout the eastern U.S., across the southern half of Canada, and along parts of the Pacific Coast. Here in California, they’re found in mature forests along the northwestern Pacific Coast and down through the Cascade Range and the northern Sierra Nevada. They prefer coniferous or mixed hardwood forests with large, still-standing, dead trees or fallen logs, where they find their favorite food: carpenter ants!
When they’re feeling peck-ish, Pileated Woodpeckers love to eat ants! Studies have shown that ants make up about 40% of their diet for most, and up to 90% for some! They have a great immune system due to all those little antie-bodies! These big birds find many other tasty morsels hiding under the bark of trees or in the rotting wood of fallen logs, including wood-boring beetle larvae, caterpillars, cockroaches, and other insects. They also eat berries and acorns.
Pileated Woodpeckers have a unique and unmistakable style when it comes to drilling holes as they search for food. Unlike the small, neat round holes made by many other woodpeckers, these birds carve out large, vertically rectangular holes, sometimes over a foot long! They often dig into stumps or at the base of standing trees, where carpenter ants and beetle larvae hide under the bark. If you come across wood chips scattered at the base of a tree and a long, rectangular hole, you’ve probably found a recent Pileated pit stop!
To extract tiny insects from bark crevices or small holes, the Pileated Woodpecker, like its other woodpecker cousins, uses its amazingly long, specially adapted tongue! Their tongue actually curves around the back of the bird’s skull and attaches to its forehead, allowing the tongue to extend more than twice the length of the bird’s beak! Additionally, the barbed tip of the tongue is hard and sharp, so it can pierce insect prey and pull it out of the tight quarters!
It’s estimated that woodpeckers hammer their bills into trees up to 12,000 times per day! How do they do this without beating their brains to a pulp? Woodpeckers have a unique shock-absorbing system to protect their brains from the shock of the repetitive pecking. Their skulls are equipped with spongy, elastic material between the brain and the skull bones, which cushions the impact of each peck and prevents brain injury!
Woodpeckers also have unique adaptations that allow them to cling to vertical tree trunks more easily and hitch their way up and down. Most songbirds have three toes in front and one toe in back, referred to as anisodactyl, which is great for perching on branches. Woodpeckers have their toes arranged with two in front and two in back. This zygodactyl arrangement, along with relatively short legs and sharp nails on their toes, allows them to securely grip onto tree trunks and branches, even when upside down! Extra-stiff tail feathers act as a kickstand to support their body weight and maintain balance while they hammer away at a tree!
During the nesting season, Pileated Woodpeckers attract mates and defend their territory by calling and drumming. Their loud call is a wild “kuk-kuk-kuk-kuk-kuk,” like the call of the Northern Flicker but deeper and slower. It echoes through the forest and sounds like you’ve stepped into a prehistoric world! To communicate with drumming, woodpeckers find the right branch or tree trunk with the proper resonating qualities. Then the bird rapidly pecks on it, not to chisel away the wood but to make the drumming sound. Some smaller species of woodpeckers can drum over 20 times per second! The Pileated’s drumming is slower, only 12-15 times per second, but their performance is always im-peck-able!
Pileated Woodpeckers mate for life, and, although a mated pair will maintain and defend the same territory each year, they will usually create a new nesting cavity each year. This is great news for other cavity-dwelling forest creatures, such as bluebirds, several species of owls, wood ducks, flying squirrels, bats, pine martens, and many others that use the abandoned Pileated cavities! That’s why it’s so important to leave some dead trees and snags in the forest whenever possible!
Thanks for chiseling out some time to enjoy Wildlife Wednesday this week! Have YOU seen Pileated Woodpeckers before? Share your sightings in the comments below!
