What Makes the Pileated Woodpecker "Pileated"?
Friend of birds and bane of ants, this large bird stands out from the crowd.
Woodpeckers sometimes are small and hard to spot, like the Red-bellied Woodpecker. These birds tend to be higher up in the trees and aren’t ground foragers like the Northern Flicker. But the Pileated Woodpecker is both large and has a bright red crest across the top of its entire head—making it much harder to miss.
This bird is distinctive for a few reasons. First, the crest is what gives the woodpecker its name. As Merriam-Webster helpfully explains pileated means “having a crest covering the pileum,” which is “the top of the head of a bird from the bill to the nape.” These bright feathers, combined with the black stripes on the bird’s white-ish face create a striking display. Female and male Pileated Woodpeckers look the same, with one exception—the male has a red stripe on its cheek instead of a black one like the females. About the size of a crow, these woodpeckers are also fairly big, outclassing Northern Flickers.
The Pileated Woodpecker has a powerful, hefty beak that it uses to forage for insects such as carpenter ants. This bird whacks away creating oval-rectangular holes that it uses as a nest. (In fact, the Cornell Lab has a really cute image of baby Pileated Woodpeckers sticking their heads out).
Dead or dying trees are especially attractive to these birds and make for easier excavation. As a result, you can find these birds both high up in trees or lower to the ground on logs in forests.
Their nests are very large and sometimes they can cause a smaller tree to break and fall! However, these nests are helpful to other birds by providing access to lots of insects hiding in the tree. Also, once the woodpeckers abandon their nest, other birds such as owls are quick to make it their new home.
In the continental United States, the Pileated Woodpecker can be found year-round along the east coast, the south, and parts of the mid-west and north-west coast.
Until next (Bird!) time,
Grover