Pileated Woodpeckers in My Yard!

Pileated Woodpeckers are more easily located when they're calling, but it was this male's leaf flipping that caught my attention and my excitement.  He was in my yard!

Though I had heard Pileated Woodpecker calls several times since moving to my new home, this was the first time I had seen one!

I've moved to a habitat very similar to the one I had been living in previously--a suburban area with wooded edges and mature diciduous and evergreen trees. Among the birds I had hoped to find here were Pileated Woodpeckers.  

This male is excavating a dead limb and likely finding beetle or ant larvae.

Pileated Woodpeckers frequently pause and look skyward while foraging on the ground.  They are large birds, about the size of crows, and lift off slowly so this alertness is essential protection from predators.  In this case, I think he is also watching and listening for his mate.  She was close by and had landed on a trunk near him.

Pileated Woodpeckers stay on their home territory all winter and remain with their mates.  In fact, the winter months are the best and sometimes the only time you can have this kind of intimate observation.  When the leaves pop in the spring, trunks and limbs are harder to see.  Even when you hear their calls or know where they land, woodpeckers disappear behind foliage.

Eventually, the male flew closer to where the female was foraging.  The pair rapidly moved from tree to tree and deeper into the woods and were lost from view.

This sighting affirms that my yard is part of this pair's territory and opens the possibility that I'll have other opportunities to observe this family.   Pileated Woodpeckers are very loyal to their territories.
Above, you can imagine how thick the foliage will be in the spring!

Visit my other Pileated Woodpecker posts on this blog.

Pileated Woodpecker--Ground Foraging

Pileated woodpeckers are totally spectacular birds.  Most of the time, it's not by accident that I find this bird in the yard--I hear his call.

This time he was interested in foraging on the decaying logs on the ground which is always fun to watch.  As I opened the door in response to his call, I caught a glimpse of him as he disappeared below sight-level, landing on the ground in an area where I've known him to forage before.   

Pileated woodpeckers eat mostly insects--ants, beetle larvae, termites, flies, spruce budworms, caterpillars, cockroaches, grasshoppers--with their favorite food considered to be the carpenter ant.   They find the insects with hearing, sight, and by chiseling decayed wood and probing with their tongue.  

In the image above you can see a glimpse of his tongue, a long slender tool that wraps around his skull in a special design that enables long extension.  Additionally, woodpecker tongues are sticky and barbed with hair like appendages that make it easy to pick up tiny insects.  

Even so, I've wondered how they feed their young with their food source being so tiny. The answer is they are a regurgitant species, meaning they partially digest their food and regurgitate it into the young's gaping mouth.

The latin name for the Pileated Woodpecker is Dryocopus pileatus.  The word dryo comes from the Latin word for tree, and kopis is Latin for dagger.  The term "pileated" or "pileatus" means capped or crested, referring to the bird's bright red crest.  This woodpecker lives up to the name with his long, chisel-shaped beak and his large crest that becomes even more impressive when raised.   

Pileated woodpeckers are attracted to mature forests with dying and decaying limbs, and downed wood.  That is what attracted this male to the ground--the split logs that surround a small garden area in the yard.  These cut pieces of wood decay over time and the same insects that burrow in the dead limbs of a tree, may also be found in fallen limbs or logs.

He moves on the ground just like he moves on a tree trunk, a scooting type walking motion mixed with hops and jumps. These images were taken on March 31st, a very windy morning and he frequently stopped and froze for a few seconds to look and listen, mostly in the direction of the moving tree limbs.  He also pauses amd holds his head up to swallow the food collected on his tongue. 

Around the turn of the twentieth century, the pileated woodpecker was declining and biologists were afraid the species would disappear because of the clear cutting of old growth forests.  Fortunately, unlike the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, this species adapted to second growth forests and its population numbers are considered to be in good shape at the present.

Visit this link to see an earlier visit this month from the whole family:  Pileated Woodpecker Family Visit
To hear the pileated calls visit Cornell's site and listen to the sound recording:  Cornell's All About Birds

And to see some of my other visits with Pileated Woodpeckers on this blog, visit:  Pileated Woodpeckers

Pileated Woodpeckers in the Snow

Pileated woodpeckers are delightful birds to watch and it is an extraordinary experience to observe one at eye-level and have it linger for a while.

On January 28th, during a beautiful snow fall, I first heard, then located, two pileated woodpeckers foraging around the yard, visiting old growth trees both in the yard and its wooded edges.  It was 19 degrees F, COLD and windy.  

Above, you see the female (top) and the male below her after she briefly landed on the same tree and they foraged together for a few minutes.  Below, the male as he looks up from foraging.  This bird's woodpecker movements are jerky, alert, ever scanning the environment and checking movement above and below, even though they sometimes ignore humans.  Among their predators are Cooper's Hawks and the Great-horned owl.

I finally retreated inside because I was so cold and my view was obscured by other trunks and limbs. Within 30 minutes, as I stood looking out the window at the snow and feeder birds, I saw the female as she landed on a tree at the edge of the patio.  This is the sort of opportunity that calls for grabbing a coat and camera and maneuvering out the door as carefully as possible.

Above is a photo of her farther out in the yard.  Notice how she has her tummy feathers fluffed with air protecting her legs from the cold and adding to her overall warmth.  She has a very young face and I suspect that she is the male's offspring rather than his mate.  I have seen this family together in April in seasons past as they begin their breeding season.

I opened the door and was very surprised that she ignored me and continued with her foraging.  Clearly she was finding something of interest. I was torn between zooming to get close images, or pulling back to get her whole body in.  I adore seeing the expression on her face, but also like the image below that shows that long sturdy tail-brace, so important in her movement and balance.

Below you can see her tongue as she probes under the bark. Woodpeckers have sticky, barbed tongues that help retrieve the insects that are hidden in crevices and underneath the bark.

Communication among family members is as facinating as watching these woodpeckers scoot up a tree, as they periodically stop to probe, pound, and extract insects.  The bugle-like call can be heard on the Cornell All About Birds site (link below) and is their most famous and loudest call.

There are also more intimate calls that specifically occur when family members are together, most often attributed to mates, but also heard when juveniles are foraging with parents.  On this occasion, I only heard the bugle call and occasionally the "kuk-kuk-kuk" sequence.

The habitat here is old growth forest with decaying trees in a suburban area where home development is interrupted by undeveloped wooded slopes.  These are the kind of broken zones that support many woodpecker species and allow people and wildlife to peacefully co-exist together.

The winter months are exceptional woodpecker-viewing months in east Tennessee.  Woodpeckers are easily spotted on bare trunks and tree limbs.  They are busy foraging to keep warm and sustain their nutritional needs.  Some woodpeckers from the mountains come down to the Tennessee Valley to spend the winter, among them the yellow-bellied sapsucker.

Above, a male yellow-bellied sapsucker forages in the yard at the same time the pileated family was present. Below, the male pileated woodpecker among large decaying limbs.

Images were taken with a Canon Rebel T2i with 100-400 Canon zoom lens.

Links and Resources:

More pileated woodpecker family posts on this blog.
Cornell All About Birds--Pileated Woodpecker.  Be sure to listen to the calls.
Cornell on Yellow-bellied Sapsucker.  Be sure to also listen to this sapsucker's call.  He blends with tree bark so well, that the call will likely be how you learn of his presence.

Pileated Woodpeckers--A Family of Four

Winter is the most wonderful time to see woodpeckers.

The limbs are still bare of leaves and you can not only see the woodpeckers more easily but you can see the trunks of the old growth trees and the places where they have been foraging over time.  All those cracks and chips, loosened bark, chiseled holes, as they forage for their favorite food--carpenter ants.

In the above images and the next two below, you see the male of the pileated woodpecker family that visited my yard yesterday.  I was lured out the door not only by the familiar pileated call but by the whimpering sounds that often accompany two woodpeckers in a family, either a male with his mate or an adult with off-spring.  In this case it was both!

It is truly a fun surprise when you step out the door expecting a search, and instead, there are pileated woodpeckers all around you!  Two off-spring of the past nesting season accompanied their parents and were foraging near each other.  It took a minute of orienting to the direction of sounds compared to the two I visually located to realize that I had four woodpeckers, two to the west of where I stood, and two to the east.  They are busy birds.  By the time you've gotten into a good position to see one of them, they've decided to move to a different tree. Below you see the young female. She was distinguishable because her newly forming crest was still a bit bare in the back.  Don't you just love that look!

And below is her handsome brother with dark, fresh plumage that is striking.    

Pileated woodpeckers begin nesting in early April and hatch off-spring from mid April to the end of May in Tennessee.  Little is known about how long the young stay with their parents after fledging.  These juveniles would be approximately 9-10 months old in age. I observed the season's family together as late as March 21st in 2012.  In that observation there was one female off-spring with the adults (see link below) and courtship behavior had already begun.  Below you see the female adult.

And another view of the young female below.

She lingered longer than the rest of the family finding a comfortable branch for preening.  I ran out of battery power, went back into the house to get a fresh camera battery and came back to find her still relaxing on the same branch with her feathers fluffed.

A very satisfying visit!

Click here to see last year's family visit in March 2012 and another fun encounter in May 2009.

Visit Cornell for more information on the Pileated Woodpecker