‘Sounds Like a Big Woodpecker’

COURTESY JERRY MCFARLAND
When a bird is called “crow-sized,” it can imply a certain runtiness. The broad-winged hawk is small compared to a red-tailed or a red-shouldered hawk. The green heron is about as small as herons get. But a crow-sized woodpecker? That sounds like a big woodpecker.

The pileated woodpecker (Dryocopus pileatus) is—with the extinction of the ivory-billed woodpecker almost certain—now our largest member of the Picidae family. In case you have wondered and haven’t had time to look it up, this adjective is pronounced “PYE-lee-ayted.” If you look in a dictionary, it has one of those unhelpful definitions: “having a pileus.” A pileus turns out to be a conical, brimless felt hat worn by Roman soldiers. In paintings on museum-collection vases the hat does look a bit like a crest. Out of the 21 species of North American picids, it is indeed (now) the only crested one.

Because I live in the middle of an extensively wooded region, I see this species more regularly than I ever have. D. pileatus has a distinctive horseshoe-shaped distribution that coincides with the eastern deciduous forest and then wraps north and westward through the Great Lakes and across the southern fringe of the boreal spruce forest and then down through the coniferous forests of the western mountains.

It is my impression that they would much rather stay within the timberlands but that they deign to venture into settled areas because there are just so many carpenter ants there. These insects plus the larvae of wood-boring beetles are the main items in the diet of the pileated woodpecker. I have listened to homeowners complain that the birds were “ruining” their prize shade tree with their large, oval borings—they can run to several feet long and several inches wide—but if this woodpecker showed interest, that tree was infested with boring insects and a goner anyway.

D. pileatus is so common in northern New England that I regularly see them flying over the road (even the interstates), crossing them as if they were particularly noisy clearings in the woods. Although they are mostly black above and below like a crow, they also have distinctive white patches on top of the wings at the bases of the upper side primary and some of the secondary feathers. Extensive white on the underwing coverts and axillaries leads to a broad stripe going up the neck and under the eyes to a dark gray bill.

As with many woodpeckers, there is some sexual dimorphism. Both males and females have a red crest, but the forward part of the crown on the females is dark gray. The slightly larger male also has a red malar swatch extending backward from the beak below the white stripe.

At 16.5 inches, they are indeed the size of a crow, but they are shorter winged, having a 29-inch span compared to a crow’s 39 inches. Nevertheless, their flight is as straight as a crow’s, but with smooth, rowing wingbeats, very unlike the undulating course of most woodpeckers.

When I was a kid, living at the edge of a small post-industrial city, we had a lot of flickers, which are attracted to lawns more than trees. When I heard the flicker’s call, a rhythmic kwik kwik kwik, I listened carefully because resembles the wek wek wek call of the pileated woodpecker. While flickers were a daily sighting, the pileated was an infrequent but regular visitor, almost always sighted in the woodlot—which was about 2 acres—between our neighbor’s house and a large public housing project.

T. Gilbert Pearson, writing in 1917 in Birds of America noted “formerly the birds were of wide distribution in the heavily wooded sections of the country, but they have now disappeared from many parts of the eastern United States. When found they are usually in regions of original forest growth, rarely being seen where the woods have been once cut over.” Pearson thought the bird was doomed. However, every year between 1966 and 2015, the Northern American Breeding Bird Survey has documented a 1.5% increase in the populations of the eastern U.S. As the eastern deciduous forest has recovered, so have the numbers of this species.

Its large size, impressive excavations, and ringing kuk kuk keekeekeekee kuk kuk (per Sibley) song have given rise to many colorful pet names over the years including logcock, great black woodpecker, cock of the woods, wood hen, wood cock, great God woodpecker, good God woodpecker, Lord God woodpecker and wood Kate. Those of us of a certain age grew up watching Woody Woodpecker cartoons. Walter Lantz based Woody’s appearance on the pileated but his crazy call on that of the western acorn woodpecker.

In addition to the oblong excavations they make while looking for food, pileated woodpeckers also dig out their own nest holes 20 to 70 feet up a trunk. According to Pearson, this can take as long as a month and requires the labor of both the male and the female, with the male doing much of the initial work and the female supplying the finishing touches. Per the Atlas of Breeding Birds of New Hampshire, the opening is triangular rather than round like that of most woodpecker species and (per allaboutbirds.org) may be excavated 10 to 24 inches downward. The birds create nest after nest in the same area over the years and the abandoned ones are used by other bird species, including screech owls, kestrels, and wood ducks.

The Atlas reports that around 1900 the pileated woodpecker was uncommon to rare south of the White Mountains but then recovered. In 1936 a nest was found in Concord after a complete absence there between 1865 and 1928. They are still mostly sparsely distributed in the (suburbanized) southeast portion of the state.

Bill Chaisson has been a birdwatcher for over 50 years. He lives and works in Wilmot. A volume these essays, called Of a Feather, is available at amazon.com.