Various - Birds and Nature, Vol. 12 No. 4 [September 1902]

In years gone by, when large sections of the United States were covered with deeply wooded virgin forests frequented only by denizens of the wildwood, the Pileated Woodpecker was an abundant resident through nearly all of North America. A bird citizen of the deeper and more extensive forest regions, it has gradually retreated before the advance of man, and it is a very rare visitant in the Eastern States and is only found in the thickly settled and heavily timbered bottom lands which the human intruder seldom penetrates. In the Southern States it is more common and may be considered abundant in some sections.

Mr. Manly Hardy says: “The Pileated Woodpecker is a constant resident of Maine, but rarely leaves the vicinity of large timber. It prefers places where large hemlocks abound, especially those localities where a few have been killed by camp building or small fires.” A strange feature of its distribution is that, though it is distributed quite generally throughout North America, there are many heavily timbered areas, well suited to its habits, in which it is not found. If it occurs at all it is very rare in the Southern Rocky Mountain regions, and is also rare in Alaska.

The Pileated Woodpecker is a beautiful bird of great size and strength. Its bill is both large and powerful. In fact, it is exceeded in size by but one of the Woodpeckers – the ivory-billed species – which is a resident of the Southern States. It is quite variable in its habits. In some sections it is very shy and retiring, while in others it is quite tame and becomes quite accustomed to man if not ruthlessly annoyed. Mr. Hardy, writing of his experience with this bird in the woods of Maine, says: “I once had two so tame they would allow me to sit within four paces of them, and put my hand upon the tree when they were not ten feet above my head.” Mr. Chapman, writing of its habits in the cypress swamps of Florida, says: “There, contrary to the experience of Audubon, I found it by no means a wild bird. Indeed, flickers were more difficult to approach,” and he also writes: “I have called these birds to me by simply clapping my slightly closed palms, making a sound in imitation of their tapping on a resonant limb.” Another writer states that when called in this manner, “they seem to lose their usual shyness and seem stupefied at not finding their mate, as they had expected.”

Few birds are more useful in the preservation of the forest from destruction by insect pests. “A workman is known by his chips.” The energy and perseverance of the Pileated Woodpecker, as it seeks for the destructive borers or other injurious insects, in the bark and wood of afflicted trees, is amply attested by numerous denuded trees and by the strips of bark and piles of chips lying on the ground. The hammering of the more familiar species of woodpeckers is but a light tapping when compared with the loud and resounding whacks of its powerful strokes. It has been known to “chisel holes six or eight inches deep in cedar and other soft-wood trees, and as large as the holes in a post-and-rail fence,” and to “pick a large hole through two inches of frozen green hemlock to get at the hollow interior.” It seldom, if ever, attacks healthy trees and it is a constant resident of extensive forests that have been swept by destructive fires and the bare tree trunks left to decay.

Mr. Wilson, that enthusiastic student of bird life, writes in his usual interesting manner concerning the habits of the Pileated Woodpecker. In his “American Ornithology” he says: “Almost every old trunk in the forest where it resides bears the marks of his chisel. Wherever it perceives a tree beginning to decay, it examines it round and round and with great skill and dexterity strips off the bark in sheets of five or six feet in length, to get at the hidden cause of the disease, and labors with a gayety and activity really surprising. I have seen it separate the greatest part of the bark from a large, dead pine tree, for twenty or thirty feet, in less than a quarter of an hour. Whether engaged in flying from tree to tree, in digging, climbing or barking, he seems perpetually in a hurry.”

During the mating season it is exceedingly noisy, not only spending much time in drumming, but also frequently uttering its love notes which to Mr. Nehrling sounds like “a-wuck, a-wuck.” Mr. Chapman describes their usual call note as a “sonorous cow-cow-cow, repeated rather slowly many times,” and when two birds come together they utter a “wichew note” similar to that of the flicker. Its note of alarm has been likened to an oft-repeated ha-he, ha-he, ha-he. The same observer hears in its call note a constant repetition of a-wick, a-wick and at times tack-tack-tack.

For its nest the Pileated Woodpecker excavates cavities in tree trunks at heights varying from twenty to eighty feet above the ground. Both sexes assist in the work of making the cavity which, Major Bendire states, “vary from seven to thirty inches in depth, and is gradually enlarged toward the bottom, where it is about six inches wide.” He also says that it takes from seven to twelve days to complete it and when completed it is quite an artistic piece of work, the walls of the cavity being quite smooth and the edges of the entrance being nicely beveled. The eggs are usually deposited on a layer of chips. Not infrequently every chip, as soon as it is loosened, is removed to a distance in order to remove every trace of the nesting site.

Birds as well as other animals are afflicted with parasitic worms. Mr. Langdon found on dissecting a Pileated Woodpecker, a “slender tape-worm about fifteen inches long and one-thirty-second of an inch wide,” and in the tissues beneath the skin of the neck “were two thread-like, round worms of a pale pinkish tint and about three-fourths of an inch in length.”

Of this wonderful bird we may truthfully say with Mr. Langille, “Whether one notes his strong flight, his elastic bounding and springing along the trunks of the trees, the effective chiseling of his powerful bill, or his sonorous cackling, one is particularly impressed with the spirit and immense energy of the bird.”