Fun Facts About Pileated Woodpeckers

• The Pileated Woodpecker is one of the biggest, most striking forest birds on the continent. It’s nearly the size of a crow, black with bold white stripes down the neck and a flaming-red crest. Look (and listen) for Pileated Woodpeckers whacking at dead trees and fallen logs in search of their main prey, carpenter ants, leaving unique rectangular holes in the wood. The nest holes these birds make offer crucial shelter to many species including swifts, owls, ducks, bats, and pine martens.
• A Pileated Woodpecker pair stays together on its territory all year round. It will defend the territory in all seasons, but will tolerate new arrivals during the winter.
• The Pileated Woodpecker’s primary food is carpenter ants, supplemented by other ants, woodboring beetle larvae, termites, and other insects such as flies, spruce budworm, caterpillars, cockroaches, and grasshoppers. They also eat wild fruits and nuts, including greenbrier, hackberry, sassafrass, blackberries, sumac berries, poison ivy, holly, dogwood, persimmon, and elderberry. In some diet studies, ants constituted 40 percent of the diet, and up to 97 percent in some individuals. Occasionally, Pileated Woodpeckers visit backyard bird feeders for seeds or suet.
• Pileated Woodpeckers forage in large, dead wood—standing dead trees, stumps, or logs lying on the forest floor. They make impressive rectangular excavations that can be a foot or more long and go deep inside the wood. These holes pursue the tunnels of carpenter ants, the woodpecker’s primary food. The birds also use their long, barbed tongue to extract woodboring beetle larvae (which can be more than an inch long) or termites lying deep in the wood. When hammering into this soft wood, Pileated Woodpeckers use their long neck to pull far back from the tree, then make powerful strikes with their heavy bill, pulling with their feet to increase the strength of the blow. The sound is often audible as a heavy thunk, and large chips of wood collect on the ground below.
• Pileated Woodpeckers are monogamous and hold large territories; it’s rare to see more than two birds together at a time. When one member of a pair dies, the other often gains a new mate, and this is one of the main ways that new individuals get a chance to breed and hold a territory. Their flight is strong, but slow and slightly undulating; the wingbeats are deep but quick and somewhat unevenly paced.