Chapter M: G. Vaiden writes to me that the pileated woodpecker is fairly (1)

common in certain localities near Rosedale, Miss. He has located seven nests in cypress, sycamore, hackberry, or sweetgum trees, at estimated heights ranging from 60 to 75 feet. His nesting dates range from April 14 to April 29.

Of the nest location, in Texas, Mr. Simmons (1925) says: “Cavity in upper part, usually 30 to 60 feet from ground, in solid trunk of live, sound tree, less commonly in dead or partly dead limbs or trunks, generally tall cottonwood, cypress, elm, or oak, on the edge of woods or in marginal timber skirting stream, and usually easily located by the half-bushel of big fresh chips scattered about on the ground below; tree 10 or more inches in diameter at cavity.”

Mr. Stockard (1904) says, of the 17 pairs that he watched in Mississippi, that the birds do not lay a second set after the nest has been robbed, but they remain in the same woods during the remainder of the season. He says of the nests:

The burrow is very large and requires in most cases about
one month for construction, being commenced in this
locality about the latter part of February. But it was very
difficult to note the exact length of time consumed in
burrowing, as the birds try so many parts of the same tree
before striking one to suit their taste. The nest tree and
other dead trees close at hand were often scarred from top
to bottom. In two cases they began a nest, then seemed to
start one in another place, and then returned to the former
and completed it. * * *

The first nest, a burrow twenty-five feet from the ground
in an old sycamore stump, contained one egg on March 22;
March 26 it contained three, and on April 1, when the set
was removed, it consisted of four slightly incubated eggs.
* * *

Only one pair was observed that had their nest in a dead
tree which stood in an open field at least sixty or seventy
yards from the wood. The female in this case flew about
the nest tree and lit once on the upper part and again
just over the nest hole while a person was in the act of
climbing the tree. This was by far the most daring bird
seen and, as mentioned above, because of the isolation of
the tree, her burrow was unusually exposed for this species.

_Eggs._--The pileated woodpecker lays ordinarily from three to five eggs; Audubon (1842) claims to have found six. The eggs vary from ovate, the commonest shape, to elliptical-ovate; some are even quite pointed. They are a brilliant china-white and usually decidedly glossy. The measurements of 52 eggs average 32.90 by 24.72 millimeters; the eggs showing the four extremes measure =35.70= by =27.00=, =30.22= by 22.35, and 29.30 by =22.00= millimeters.

_Young._--Bendire (1895) says that “an egg is deposited daily, and incubation begins occasionally before the set is completed, and lasts about eighteen days, both sexes assisting in this duty, as well as in caring for the young. Like all Woodpeckers, the Pileated are very devoted parents, and the young follow them for some weeks after leaving the nest, until fully capable of caring for themselves. Only one brood is raised in a season.”

_Plumages._--I have seen no small nestlings of this species, but they are probably hatched naked and blind, like all other woodpeckers; the juvenal plumage is evidently acquired before the young bird leaves the nest.

The young male, in juvenal plumage, is much like the adult male in general appearance, but the body plumage is softer, less firm, and rather lighter and more sooty in color; the tips of the primaries have dull-white narrow margins, which soon wear away; the red of the head is duller, paler, and more restricted; on the fore half of the crown and the malar region, the feathers are basally grayish brown, the red showing only on the tips of most of the feathers, producing a mixed color effect. The young female is similar to the young male but with even less red in the head; the forehead and most of the crown are grayish brown, which invades the red posterior portion of the crown; and there is no red in the malar region. Audubon (1842) says that the bill of the young bird is considerably longer than that of the adult.

The juvenal plumage is apparently worn for only a short time, during the summer and early fall; I have not been able to detect it beyond August; this is followed by a prolonged molt into a first winter plumage, which is scarcely distinguishable from that of the adult. Adults have a complete molt between June and September.

_Food._--The food of the southern pileated woodpecker is not essentially different from that of the other races of the species, with due allowance for the difference in environment. Prof. F. E. L. Beal (1895) says: “Six stomachs, collected by Dr. B. H. Warren on the St. Johns River in Florida, contained numerous palmetto ants (_Camponotus escuriens_), and remains of other ants, several larvae of a Prionid beetle (_Orthosoma brunnea_), numerous builder ants (_Crematogaster lineolata_), one larva of _Xylotrechus_, and one pupa of the white ant (_Termes_).”

George Finlay Simmons (1925) says that in Texas it “feeds on ants, particularly about decayed stumps; the eggs, larvae, and adults of wood-boring insects, particularly beetles; and on berries, acorns, nuts, and wild grapes. When digging for insects beneath the bark or in the wood of dead limbs or trunks of trees, it pounds steadily away, head swinging back in an impossible arc and driving straight down with the force of a blacksmith’s sledge, chips flying every stroke or two; by employing a wrenching stroke with its chisel-bill, it knocks three-inch, four-inch, or even six-inch chips from the tree and causes them to fly for some distance.”

Arthur H. Howell (1924) says that in Alabama its food “consists mainly of ants, beetles, and wild fruits and berries, including sour gum, tupelo gum, dogwood, persimmon, frost grape, holly, poison ivy, sumac, and hackberry.”

_Behavior._--The pileated woodpecker is ordinarily a wild, shy bird of the wilderness forests, though in some places it is said to be quite unsuspicious, where perhaps it has not yet learned to fear man, or where familiarity has taught it to trust him. Its flight is rather slow, but vigorous and usually direct, after the manner of a crow; at times, however, in short swings, it adopts the bounding flight, so common to many woodpeckers. It is an adept at keeping out of sight behind a tree trunk and will lead a hunter a long chase by flying from tree to tree well in advance of him. When shot dead, it may cling for some time to the branch or trunk, until its muscles relax and allow it to fall. If wounded, it keeps up a constant chatter while falling and will not become quiet while life remains; a wounded bird should be handled carefully, for it can inflict a painful wound with its powerful beak.

Audubon (1842) relates the following story, as told to him by the Rev. John Bachman: “A pair of pileated woodpeckers had a nest in an old elm tree, in a swamp, which they occupied that year; the next spring early, two blue-birds took possession of it, and there had young. Before these were half grown, the woodpeckers returned to the place, and, despite of the cries and reiterated attacks of the blue-birds, the others took the young, not very gently, as you may imagine, and carried them away to some distance. Next the nest itself was disposed of, the hole cleaned and enlarged, and there they raised a brood. The nest, it is true, was originally their own.”

Robert P. Allen has sent me the following note: “When in one of the Carolina river swamps with Herbert L. Stoddard, early in December 1936, we were interested in the actions of pileated woodpeckers that we called to us by tapping on the side of our cypress dug-out in imitation of the birds. We paddled our canoe close against the buttress of a large cypress tree, so that we were partially concealed by the trunk itself and by a dense growth of intertwining branches overhead. As many as four pileateds at one time responded to our efforts, and all these appeared to be males. As they swooped low, to get a look at this stranger in their midst, each bird made what we took to be an _intimidating_ noise with its wings.

“From the immediate and pugnacious interest that these male (?) pileateds showed in our presence, it would seem as if they had previously cataloged the pileated population of that area and had, therefore, rushed over to investigate the presence of a bird that could not be accounted for, except as a stranger and a trespasser. Their efforts at intimidation were evidently designed to drive us out of the region.”

_Voice._--The most familiar note of the pileated woodpecker is the loud, ringing call, suggesting the “yucker” call of the flicker, but louder and stronger, less rapid, more prolonged, and on a lower key.

Mr. Simmons (1925) has summed up the notes of this woodpecker very well, as follows: “A loud _cac, cac, cac_ as it flies. A sonorous _cow-cow-cow_, repeated many times; a clear _wichew_, when two birds are together. A loud cackle, like loud, ringing, derisive laughter, _chuck-chuck_; _chuck, chuck-ah, chuck, chuck-ah, chuck, chuck, chuck, chuck_; or _chuck, chuck, chuck, chuck, chuck, chuck, chuck_.”

_Field marks._--The pileated woodpecker has the appearance of a large, black bird, nearly as large as a crow and somewhat like it in flight, but the large, white patches in the wings are distinctive, as well as the flaming red crest. As it bounds through the woods in long swinging flights from tree to tree, it is unmistakable. While hammering on a tree trunk, its long neck and heavy head and beak are conspicuous and distinctive.

_Winter._--Throughout most of its range the southern pileated woodpecker is a permanent resident; in fact, there is very little southward movement for the species, even in the more northern portions of its range, except for winter wanderings in search of a suitable food supply.

Vernon Sharpe, Jr. (1932), writing from Tennessee, says: “The winter roosting place of this bird is rather interesting. A live hollow tree is selected, and there two or more holes are dug, presumably with the thought of using one for escape should any attack by some night marauder take place. These roosting places are used year after year; in fact, there is one site in the Overton Hills, south of Nashville, that has been used for so many seasons it has become essential for the woodpecker to cut away a portion of the tree that is trying to heal over the cavity.”

DISTRIBUTION

_Range._--North America; chiefly timbered regions east of the Great Plains and from southern Mackenzie to western Montana and California.

The range of the pileated woodpecker extends =north= to northern British Columbia (Buckley Lake and Thutade Lake); southern Mackenzie (Fort Liard and Fort Smith); northern Saskatchewan (Poplar Point); northeastern Ontario (Moose Factory); and southeastern Quebec (Godbout and Mont Louis Lake). =East= through the wooded areas along the Atlantic coast to southeastern Florida (Everglades, Royal Palm Hammock, and Key West). =South= along the Gulf coasts of Florida, Mississippi, and Louisiana, to southeastern Texas (San Point). The species is not known through the southern Rocky Mountain and Great Basin regions, appearing next in central California (Yosemite Valley and Napa County). From the latter point it occurs north along the Pacific coast through Oregon and Washington, to northwestern British Columbia (Hazelton and Buckley Lake).

The range above outlined is for the entire species, which has, however, been separated into four subspecies. The southern pileated woodpecker (_C. p. pileatus_) is found in the Eastern United States from central Texas and northern Florida north to Oklahoma, southern Illinois, southern Indiana, southern Pennsylvania, and Maryland; the northern pileated woodpecker (_C. p. abieticola_), occupies the balance of the range in Eastern North America, except for the peninsula of Florida to which the Florida pileated woodpecker (_C. p. floridanus_) is restricted. The western pileated woodpecker (_C. p. picinus_) is found chiefly in the humid areas of the Northwest coast district but also south to central California and east to western Montana and Idaho.

_Casual records._--Two specimens have been taken in North Dakota, one at Grafton on May 30, 1905, and the other at Fargo on October 16, 1915. It may occur rarely in Wyoming, although no specimen is at present known. The Colorado and New Mexico records are not considered satisfactory.

_Egg dates._--Alberta: 18 records, May 10 to June 22; 9 records,
May 15 to 30, indicating the height of the season.
Arkansas: 18 records, April 5 to May 15; 9 records, April 15 to 30.
Florida: 32 records, March 22 to May 25; 16 records, April 10 to 23.
New Hampshire: 6 records, May 6 to 25.
Pennsylvania: 7 records, April 23 to May 21.
Texas: 8 records, March 4 to May 16.

CEOPHLOEUS PILEATUS ABIETICOLA Bangs

NORTHERN PILEATED WOODPECKER

PLATES 20-24

HABITS

CONTRIBUTED BY BAYARD HENDERSON CHRISTY

This, the largest race of _Ceophloeus pileatus_, inhabits the forests of the Transition and Canadian Zones, from the Atlantic coast to the Rocky Mountains. In the South it is replaced by _C. p. pileatus_ and in the West by _C. p. picinus_. The southern limit of its range lies across southern Pennsylvania, West Virginia, central Ohio, southern Indiana, southern Illinois, and Missouri. The most northerly record of its occurrence is that of John Reid, noted by Bendire (1895). He took a specimen on Big Island, in Great Slave Lake (lat. 61° N.). Bangs (1898), who described the northern form and named it _C. p. abieticola_, believed that in the mountains of Virginia and West Virginia lay the line of transition from the southern to the northern form; but later investigators have determined that the line lies, as first noted above, somewhat northward of Bangs’ location.

The characteristics that distinguish the northern from the southern form are greater size, longer bill, slatiness rather than sootiness of the black of the plumage, and greater extent of the white areas.

Catesby (1731) depicted the bird (in its southern form) and called it “the large red-crested woodpecker”; and Linnaeus (1758), citing Catesby as his source, named it, for his purposes, _pileatus_ (= crested). Following Linnaeus, the English naturalist Latham (1783) began in 1781 to publish his General Synopsis; and he, lacking knowledge of the bird in its haunts, and finding Catesby’s circumlocution unwieldy, took from Linnaeus’s Latin, as a name for common usage, “pileated woodpecker.” The indications are that Latham coined the name; certainly he gave it currency.

The bird already possessed a common name; and it is a pity that Latham did not know it. In its native land it was, and still is, commonly called, the log-cock. That is a good name--apt, picturesque, and widely used. Wilson (1811) knew it well enough, and so did Audubon (1842); and they would have done well, had they given it place as the established vernacular name. But Wilson, under Bartram’s tutelage, followed Latham, and Audubon followed Wilson. They, in their prestige, have settled the matter. Nuttall (1832) tried to make a stand for log-cock, and others since have tried, but in vain. And now upon this splendid creature a dull piece of pedantry remains hopelessly fixed.

Another homespun name in extensive use is _Cock-of-the-woods_; yet another is _Wood-cock_. This last is suitable enough, but it leads obviously to confusion. Accordingly, within the range of the true woodcock (_Philohela minor_), the woodpecker is commonly distinguished as the “black woodcock.” Other appellatives that have been picked up here and there and gathered in the books are “black woodpecker,” “English woodpecker,” “black log,” “king-of-the-woods,” “stump breaker”; and, because of its cackling cry, “wood-hen,” “Indian-hen,” “laughing woodpecker,” “johnny-cock,” “wood-chuck,” and “cluck-cock.” (The last, given by Scoville, 1920, as current in Juniata County, Pa., is, perhaps, an assimilation from the Pennsylvania Dutch.)

The subspecific name _abieticola_ (= dweller amid fir trees) is in some degree misleading, for, in the Northeastern States at least, the bird is commonly found in forests of mingled conifers and hardwoods; it shows no partiality to firs, nor even to conifers generally; and it cuts its nesting cavities, in the large majority of cases, in the dead and standing trunks of deciduous trees. In the Rocky Mountains, however, according to the Weydemeyers (1928), it prefers growths of larch, yellow pine, and Douglas fir.

It is a denizen of extensive forests. It will adapt itself to second growth--particularly where the young trees have sprung up about some remnant of the old; but in any case it requires wide areas. As forests dwindle to woodlots, along with the wild turkey, the barred owl, and the raven, it disappears. From regions once forested but now devoted to agriculture it is gone; in the mountains, however, in the marginal areas, where wooded ridges extend out to the plains, and in forested swamp lands, it continues. In such territories, indeed, its numbers during the past 50 years have increased, and it has reappeared in localities once deserted. Reports of such recrudescence are many, and they come from widely scattered places, particularly in the States to eastward of the Mississippi River.

Roger T. Peterson (MS.) says: “The pileated woodpecker has greatly increased in the Northeast during the past few years. At one time it was nearly gone from many parts of New York State and southern New England, where it had occurred in fair numbers. The bird disappeared from northern New Jersey about 1880, and from southern New Jersey in 1908. About 1920 W. DeWitt Miller found it again at two or three points in northern New Jersey; and now it is fairly common in many places in the northern part of the State, and as far east as in Bergen County, within 15 miles of New York City. Within the past 5 years it has reappeared in the lower Hudson Valley. It is especially common in some portions of southwestern New York State. In one recent year I found four nests near the city of Jamestown, N. Y. Similar increases have been noted by bird students in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Ohio, and Missouri”--and, he might have added, in Pennsylvania.

Ludlow Griscom (1929) wrote: “I incline to the view that the increase in this Woodpecker is not so much due to conservation, as to its adaptation to less primeval conditions. The generation that regarded this species as a game-bird died off in this Region [the Northeastern States] before it returned.”

Granted that the species shows itself to be adaptable, it still is pertinent to note other ameliorations of circumstance. When lumbering operations have been carried through to completion, when the camps are gone from the woods, and when new growth has begun to spring up, it is generally true that animal life in its larger forms tends to reappear and to increase. Again, the development of more fertile lands in the West has had effect in the abandonment of poorer lands in the East. Extensive areas, in New England particularly, that a hundred years ago were farmed, have now long since returned to wilderness. The forests of second growth, as they approach maturity, may be supposed increasingly to afford the food resources proper to this denizen of the great forests. And, finally, protective laws have been more intelligently framed, more widely adopted, and more generally respected.

The birds range over plain and mountain side. They prefer “the edges of the balsam and cedar swamps, when surrounded with forests of hardwood and hemlocks” (Blackwelder, 1909, Iron County, Mich.). Their nesting places are ordinarily in lowlands, and near water. In the region where I have known them best--the Huron Mountains, in Marquette County, Mich.--I have found the birds to occur in pairs or families at intervals of two or three miles along the course of a river that flows through primeval forest land. This I take to be a fair indication of the saturation point in pileated woodpecker population.

_Migration._--Generally speaking, the species is resident wherever found. Some of the earlier naturalists supposed that it retired in winter from the more northerly portions of its range; but none affords any evidence. George Miksch Sutton (1930), when ornithologist for the Game Commission of Pennsylvania, having reviewed the reports of the wardens, said that they tended to indicate a gradual movement of the birds in winter around the eastern end of Lake Erie and southward into Pennsylvania. Such may be the case. On the other hand, it is true that, after the nesting season has passed, and throughout fall and winter, the birds wander and appear in areas where at other seasons they are unknown; and it may be that Dr. Sutton’s wardens were basing their reports upon such seasonal reappearances. More precise observations must be made before it can be asserted with confidence that there is migration in any sense other than that here recognized.

_Courtship._--It is usual to find the birds associated in pairs, even after the nesting season has passed; and from this the inference has been drawn (Morrell, 1901; Knight, 1908) that they continue, year after year, constantly mated. Lewis O. Shelley, writing from East Westmoreland, N. H., says (MS.): “It is my belief that the pileated mates for life, for, seen almost daily, one pair is known to have shown no active spring display for the past few years, nor was a third bird (male) seen near.” This inference may be sound; nevertheless, an element of conjecture here should not be overlooked, and further data should be sought.

In some cases, certainly, the birds engage in mating antics, and Edmund W. Arthur (1934) relates an example:

On April 14, 1933, while driving with a companion * * *
from Slippery Rock [Pennsylvania] * * * to Grove City, I
observed a Pileated Woodpecker * * * flying across the
highway a short distance south of Barmore Run. Stopping our
car, we got out and followed the bird with our eyes, until
it alighted on a tall tree a thousand feet away in the
swampy woodland. Presently another, and then a third, were
seen. They were quite restless, though apparently fearless,
as evidenced by their flying about, alighting in plain view
of us upon trees not fifty yards distant. After several
minutes one of them--a female we thought--alighted upon a
grassy knoll in a pasture to the left of the road, where
it walked about for a brief interval, until a second came
to the knoll and approached within three or four feet of
the first. Then began a curious movement, much resembling
the dance of Flickers, wherein with bowing and scraping one
bird, stepping sideways, made a circle about the other, who
slowly turned, facing the performer. When the dance ceased
there was a sudden jerky movement on the part of each,
and thereupon they flew away. There are two houses at the
intersection, and the people living in one of them told us
that a pair of these birds had nested the year before in a
maple just in the rear of their house.

Francis H. Allen has written a description of a formal dance at a season remote from mating time; and, since the description has not been published, and since it is pertinent to the question of permanence of mating, it is here given at length:

“On the side of Mount Monadnock, N. H., October 13, 1908, I watched two birds executing a sort of dance. When first seen they were clinging to the hole of a spruce, near the ground. They hopped up and down the trunk, frequently pecking at each other’s bills simultaneously, now on one side of the tree, now on the other. When I got too near they flew a short distance to another tree, and I followed them about from tree to tree for about half an hour, often within 50 or 60 feet of them. They always lit at the base of the tree and worked up a few feet, seldom going more than 5 feet up, I think. They hopped backward and downward a great deal, and often they lifted and partly spread their wings. Their motions were limber and undulating, marked by a certain awkward grace, without the stiffness of the smaller woodpeckers. The crests were elevated occasionally. I noticed no difference in the markings, but I was then unacquainted with the sexual differences of the species, and I cannot say whether or not they were male and female. They occasionally uttered a faint _wahh, wahk, wahk_, in a soft, conversational tone; but it was for the most part a silent performance.”

The bird drums a roll, as do other woodpeckers. The only other drumming of comparable intensity is that of the yellow-bellied sapsucker, but commonly the pileated woodpecker’s performance is so heavy as to be unmistakable. Often the drumming consists not of a roll but of slow heavy beats. Dr. Sutton (1930) writes: “On May 19, 1925, * * * I heard a male drumming for over an hour * * * During the whole period there was a noticeable similarity of the performances * * * At least fifty or sixty times there was an introductory, rapidly given _roll_; then a pause, followed by three distinct blows, * * * giving much the impression of a queer rhythm beat upon an aboriginal drum.” With this the description of the drumming of the sapsucker given by Dr. Harry C. Oberholser (1896b) may be compared.

Ernest Waters Vickers (1915) gives the following description of “the masterly roll of the great log-cock”:

“This roll is composed of twelve strokes or blows, forming
an ascending and descending climax; increasing in rapidity
and volume to the middle and dying in force and rapidity
just as it began. While the bird may not give the complete
roll, may break off anywhere, it is always, so far as I
have heard, a part of the above * * * A mellow yet powerful
cellular jar to which the whole wooded heart of the forest
makes echoing response--a solemn and ancient sound. * * *

“Thus * * * I heard one drumming far away on a sounding
board of peculiar musical resonance and power to carry * * *
I had often heard this roll a full mile and a half away;
once or twice I had even heard it in the house with doors
and windows closed! * * * This old sounding-board was the
hollow limb or arm of a big tulip tree or “white wood”
flung out at right angle from the trunk 60 or 70 feet from
the ground, a mere shell as appeared * * * sound and hard
and barkless. The spot where he hammered was white where
the weathered gray fibers had been beaten off by constant
use.

“That April day * * * he sat upright upon the limb grasping
it firmly, * * * poising himself, making a motion or two
as a neat penman about to begin writing starts with a
preliminary flourish, struck the limb somewhat lightly
at first and deliberately, accelerating both speed and
power, diminishing to stop as he started. He then paused
to listen to the effect, attend to the echoes, or wait for
the response of his mate perhaps, which occasionally rolled
back from somewhere away east in the woods. He would hop
about a trifle, cock his head examining his neighborhood a
little, dress his feathers or search for parasites;--but
not for long did he forget what he was there for; then
gather himself up for another reverberation. With such
energy did he hammer that his whole body shook and his
wings quivered. He fairly hurled himself wildly at it.
The great loose hair-like scarlet crest flowed in the sun
and his scarlet moustache added to his noble and savage
appearance.”

_Nesting._--The birds are very tenacious of their nesting places, returning year after year to the same location and even to the same tree trunk. It is usual to find several nesting holes (and, perhaps, winter quarters too) within an area, say, 100 yards square. In such preference, held to even when the forest has been partially cut down, the reason probably lies why nests sometimes are found in open places. Commonly, however, the nesting stub stands in heavy forest and within the shadow of the leafy canopy. There are a few records of nests on mountain sides and ridges, but, typically, the nesting tree stands in valley or bottomland and near the margin of lake or stream or in a swamp. The boles of trees riddled and furrowed in the pursuit of food are in no case used for nesting. An ant-infested trunk may be supposed to be definitely not suitable for such use.

Data are at hand upon 33 nests, from points widely scattered throughout the range. Of these, one cavity was sunk in a large dead hemlock, one in a dead pitch pine, one in a telegraph pole (an oddity--Roberts, 1932), and 30 in the boles of deciduous trees. Three are reported as dug in living trees; four are more particularly reported as in the dead tops of living trees; the remaining 20-odd were, certainly most of them, and (for all that appears) all of them, in dead stubs. Of the 30, eight were in beech trees; six in poplar, and a seventh in tulip poplar. Three were in birches, three in oaks, three in hickories. Two were in sugar maples and one in a red maple. One was in an ash, one in an elm, and one in a basswood. One was as low as 15 feet from the ground; three as high as 70 feet. The average height was about 45 feet.

The trunk at the point where the hole is drilled will ordinarily be from 15 to 20 inches in diameter. The hole commonly, though not invariably, faces the east or the south. Such is the preferred position, but, as may be supposed, the slope of the surface of the tree trunk and the quality of the wood are factors in the choice; and holes sometimes are found drilled in west and north faces of the trunks. The hole may be drilled through bark; more frequently it is through the bleached and bonelike surface of a stub from which the bark has long been stripped away. Though sometimes quite circular, the hole tends to be of triangular outline, peaked above and leveled below. The lower margin of the hole is outwardly and downwardly beveled and very nicely finished. The orifice varies from 3¼ to 4½ inches in diameter, and typically may be 3¼ inches in width and 3½ in vertical extent. The only other notable item in external appearance is that, if the tree be bare of bark and smooth surfaced (as is usual), an area of surface a few inches below the hole will be seen to have become polished by the rubbing of the tail feathers of the parent birds. And this spot, perhaps in consequence of difference in the absorption of moisture and fungus growth, may persist and be still plainly discernible in later years.

A nesting tree that may be regarded as typical stood in a dense forest, entirely of hardwood--maples, elms, and yellow birches--on the plain of a high and ancient beach of Lake Superior, cut through by a mountain stream, and about a hundred yards from the water. It was the smooth and barkless stub of a dead elm, about 45 feet high and having a girth, breast-high, of 76 inches. The hole was smooth and white, and the wood was still firm. The stub stood well shaded beneath the living trees. A few flecks of morning sunlight fell upon its eastern face; but throughout the greater part of the day it remained in shadow. It had been the woodpeckers’ nesting place certainly for four years. The highest hole seemed to be the oldest--in the south face and near the top. The uppermost 6 feet of the stub had since become weathered and checked and manifestly unsuitable. Next, on the north face, there was an old and black-looking hole about 36 feet up. The third and lowest hole was in the east face and about 25 feet up; and, lastly, there was the hole of the year, 34 feet up and also in the east face.

The chamber within is capacious and is ordinarily of conical form, tapering slightly from a low domed roof downward to a bowllike bottom. There may be a slight bulging of the walls below a narrowed median portion. The depth may vary from 10 to 24 inches (extreme figures of 6 and 26 have been recorded). The average of 15 measurements is 19 inches. The entrance hole leads to the upper widest portion, and there the chamber is 7 or 8 inches across. The distance from the outer surface of the hole of the tree to the remote wall of the chamber is about 11 inches. The entrance passageway about 2 inches inward is ridged across, and from this median ridge the floor of the passageway slopes downward, both inwardly and outwardly, and this outward slope forms the bevel already mentioned. The bowl at the bottom is 6 or 6½ inches across. In a specimen before me as I write, the wall of the chamber below the entrance hole is 4 inches thick. The ridge across the floor of the entrance passageway is rounded. Its crest is 2¼ inches inward from the outer surface of the tree trunk, and the vertical depth of the outward bevel is 2 inches. All the surfaces of the cavity are neatly and uniformly chiseled. Along the sides of the entrance passageway extend in parallel curves the tool marks of the bird’s beak. No nesting materials are brought in. A feather or two will be the only trace of occupancy remaining after the young are flown. In some though not in all cases it is possible for a man to thrust in his arm and reach the bottom of the chamber.

As a general rule, certainly, a new cavity is drilled for every brood. Such exceptions as have been recorded have explanation in human interference. Samuel Scoville, Jr. (1920), quotes Richard C. Harlow to the effect that but once in his experience had a second use of a nesting cavity occurred. Afterward Mr. Harlow said to me in conversation that even in that instance the cavity had been deepened before it was used for a second time. The only other instance that has come to my attention is one recorded by Morrell (1901) in which a single cavity was used three times--in 1895, in 1897, and in 1898. In preparation for the third nesting the cavity had been deepened by three inches. This nesting was in “a small patch of good sized trees * * * separated [from] the main growth by cutting,” and it may be supposed that the woodpeckers had been unduly limited in the choice of nesting sites. In both cases the birds were subject to the disturbance of persistent egg-collecting. It stands to reason that, in avoidance of parasites, the practice should have evolved of drilling a fresh cavity for each brood.

Mr. Harlow (1914) found that in one instance the drilling of the nesting cavity was in progress in March and was continued “all during March and April.” The female worked alone, and the male continued near by. This nest, an unusually early one, contained, on April 30, three eggs. In the Northern States the eggs commonly are laid early in May. Incubation continues, according to Burns (1915), for 18 days. The young leave the nest about the middle of June.

The range of date in nesting is illustrated by two records that come from Centre County, Pa. (Scoville, 1920; Burleigh, 1931). One is of a set of eggs that hatched on May 11. These eggs must have been laid before April 23. The other record is of a set collected May 11 and found to be practically fresh. The interval at which these two cases stand apart is about 25 days. Scoville (1920) quotes Harlow, a collector whose experience was chiefly in Centre County, to the effect that “May 10 is the standard date for a full clutch of eggs.”

Records of nests are at hand from Maine, New Hampshire, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Wisconsin. The total body of data, however, is small; and it is not possible to discover what the difference may be in mean nesting date from south to north within the region covered. There is a record from Maine, for instance (Morrell, 1901), of a set of eggs found to be heavily incubated as early as May 13.

_Eggs._--The eggs are white, with a gleaming smoothness and translucence of shell. They rest at the bottom of the cavity, on the bare bed of finely splintered wood. Three eggs often complete the set, but more commonly four. Of 17 recorded sets, 4 are sets of three, and 13 are sets of four. Some of the earlier writers (Wilson, for instance, 1811) said the number of eggs might be five or even six; but no specific record of so large a number has been found. The eggs are of ovate outline.

The measurements of 51 eggs average 33.16 by 25.21 millimeters; the eggs showing the four extremes measure =38.2= by =27.1=, =30.2= by 25.2, and 33.05 by =23.75= millimeters.

There are cases on record in which a pair of these birds, robbed of their eggs, have laid again (and in the same cavity); with this qualification, there is but a single brood in a season.

_Young._--In a particular instance; which I take to be typical, of a nesting (in northern Fulton County, Pa.) I found the male to be no less attentive than the female to the duties of incubation and nurture. In one respect, indeed, the male seemed to be the more attentive, for on both of the two occasions when I had opportunity to observe--once shortly before, the other shortly after the hatching of the eggs--it was the male bird who at sunset retired within the hole and who at sunrise the following morning appeared from within. And I mention this the more confidently since I find chance confirmation in the narrative of another observer, Morrell (1901), and since like observations have been made upon other species of woodpeckers--upon the flicker, for instance, and upon the ivory-billed woodpecker (Allen, 1937).

When incubation was in progress I found the parent birds to be relieving one another at intervals of about two hours; and a week later, when the young were still small, they were coming in with food and replacing one another at intervals of approximately one hour. It may have been accidental, and yet it seemed to me noteworthy, that the routine of hourly visits was broken when the female returned after an absence of 10 minutes to afford the male freedom for 40 minutes before he returned to retire within the cavity for the night.

At the time when hatching was near, and afterward when the young were newly hatched, one or the other of the parent birds was constantly present in the nesting chamber and, the weather being warm, was much of the time perched immediately within the hole. And I then realized the value of the larger dimensions of the upper portion of the chamber. The waiting bird was constantly moving about, thrusting its head out and withdrawing it again, turning about within the chamber so that it had free view outward, preening, reaching upward with its foot and scratching its head. And all this movement was free because the space was wide.

Each of the parents seemed to have its own path of approach to the nest. One of them came almost invariably to a particular position on the trunk, about 6 feet below and to the right, and hopped up thence to the entrance, but the other bird followed a different course.

I was impressed, too, with the comparative silence of the birds at their nesting tree. Such small converse as took place there (a flicker-like _wuck-a-wuck_--and it occurred irregularly) was so soft as to be scarcely audible to human ears at a distance of fifty yards.

The feeding of the young is by regurgitation; and, while the young are still small and remain at the bottom of the nesting cavity, the parents may be seen to follow an interesting routine. The incoming bird hops to the hole, perches on the ridge of the entrance passageway, and then swings inward and downward, at the same time elevating the posterior part of its body until the tail presses upon the outer upper rim of the hole. In this position, evidently, the parent’s bill meets those of the nestlings. This attitude is maintained often for as much as a minute, and while it is maintained the body of the bird may be seen to shake convulsively--plainly indicating that regurgitation is in progress.

When the young are small, the parent, after feeding, does not immediately leave the nest but awaits the incoming of its mate. It then glides away on wide-spread wings; and, while I suspected that the excrement of the young is carried in the bill and dropped, I was unable to detect this. Quite possibly, in this early stage at least, the excrement is swallowed by the parent.

Charles W. Townsend (1925) gave account of a family observed in Worcester County, Mass., when the young were well developed and nearly ready to leave the nest:

On June 11, 1924, I spent five hours within twenty-five
feet of the base of the stub, unconcealed, and on June 14,
six hours, but after the first hour I took up a position
about fifty yards away, partially concealed by bushes.

My observations may be summarized as follows: the young
were fed eleven times at the first visit, four times at the
second when the adults acted in a very shy manner. As a
rule the female fed the young, but on three occasions the
male was identified at the hole. * * *

As a rule the adult appeared suddenly at the hole, flying
noiselessly through the forest. Occasionally it alighted
below the hole and rapidly ascended by hops, or it alighted
on some neighboring tree, and often calling like a Flicker,
glided on motionless outstretched wings in a graceful curve
to its young. The flight away from the hole was always
direct after a preliminary downward glide and lacked the
usual woodpecker undulations. * * *

The three young crowded to the hole as soon as a parent
appeared anywhere in the neighborhood and eagerly stretched
forth their heads and necks. * * * They were always hungry
and screamed with rasping voices for food, once or twice
they uttered low whinnies. The adult inserted its bill
to its full length into the throats of the young and
vigorously regurgitated and pumped in the nourishment. * * *
After feeding the young, the female on several occasions,
the male on one, entered the nest, to emerge after a minute
or two and glide away. Once I detected a white piece in the
bill, once, something dark, but the other times nothing at
all.

Herbert L. Stoddard (1917) has noted the “hissing” noise of the young within the nesting cavity when the trunk is jarred, “similar to young flickers, but a great deal louder.”

When the young have flown from the nest, the cavity is not utterly abandoned. I once saw one of the parent birds reenter at midday a cavity from which the young had recently flown and remain within for 40 minutes. Why, I know not. The mate accompanied this returning bird and waited near by. Maurice Brooks writes (MS.): “Nest cavities are sometimes used as roosting places after the nesting season. On the evening of August 2, 1937, at Jacksons Mill [Lewis County, W. Va.], I saw six birds (two adults and four young) enter a cavity that had held a nest earlier in the season. This was probably the brood of the year, with the parents.”

_Food._--The pileated woodpecker lives upon insects that infest standing and fallen timber and supplements this diet with wild berries and acorns.

Ants are the chief item of food. It is in pursuit of ants that the woodpecker cuts its great furrows in the boles of standing trees, living and dead. On examination the heart wood exposed by the woodpecker’s operations will be found to have been penetrated by the labyrinthine passageways of the great carpenter ants, _Camponotus herculeanus_ (Linnaeus).

All the observations of others that have come to my attention upon the woodpecker when actually engaged in cutting these great trunk-penetrating chasms have been made in winter and early in spring, and with them my own are in agreement. It is a natural surmise that only in winter is such heavy work done, since in summer proper food is more easily available. Another surmise along the same lines is that the disappearance of the bird from particular areas, followed after an interval of years by reappearance, may perhaps have occurred in correspondence with precisely such a fluctuation in its essential, wintertime food supply: it must find, when the ground is snow-covered, ant-infested trunks of large trees.

In September I once made leisurely observation upon a bird at work upon a dead but standing hemlock tree. With swinging, obliquely directed blows it was splitting off the outer leaves of the scalelike bark and pausing intermittently with head turned to the trunk, licking up, as I supposed, the insect life thus exposed. Again, in September, I came upon a pair feeding together upon the ground. They had been tearing up a carpet of moss that spread over damp surfaces both of wood and of rock, and I thought that their prey must be insect life that they were finding in the moss itself.

And yet again, on September 21, I watched for many minutes an adult female feeding on a charred and decayed stump that remained in a young forest of jack pines. She was perched about a foot from the ground. Her method was by deliberate and swinging blows to break away platelike fragments of still firm wood, and then to intrude her bill and search with her tongue (as was evident) the opened cavity. This licking was always, or nearly always, upward, and often the head was turned, crown inward, throat outward. A jay might call or some other forest sound be heard, and the bird would pause, listen for an instant, and then resume her work. A day or two later I visited the stump and with my knife made an incision in it, and I found it to be the home of a colony of ants--not of the large _Camponotus_ but of a smaller, wine-black species about a quarter of an inch long. The body of the stump was honeycombed with their galleries.

Of the major wintertime operations Vickers (1910) has written:

Like the flicker, the [pileated woodpecker] is a great
lover of ants, which accordingly occupy a large place in
his bill-of-fare. So, to dine on the big black timber ants,
which are his special delight, he drives holes to the very
heart of growing forest trees, tapping the central chamber
of the colony, where, in winter, he finds the dormant
swarm unable to move and feasts upon them at leisure....
And the Log-cock makes no mistakes, though man might find
no outward sign of an ant-tree. Doubtless that strong
formic smell, coupled with his experience in sounding tree
trunks,--as a man tells a ripe watermelon by the _plunk_ of
it,--enables him not only to find the tree, but, what is
more remarkable, to drive his hole with such precision that
he taps the heart of the community.

O. M. Bryens (1926) wrote from St. Joseph County, Mich.:

On February 16, 1925, I was able to approach within twelve
feet of one of these Woodpeckers busily engaged in digging
in a maple stub, two feet in diameter and about twelve feet
high. He was after insects whose borings I found later upon
examining the wood. I watched him for about an hour.

He seldom gave more than three or four pecks at a time, and
would then swing his head round to one side or the other,
sometimes raising his scarlet crest. He seldom threw back
his head without tossing a chip back of him, and when I
examined his work after he had left, later in the day, I
found some chips near the stub, which were three inches
long and one inch wide. Others half this size had been
thrown out on the snow a distance of four feet. The hole
was on the west side and measured six inches across and ten
inches long, and extended to a depth of six inches toward
the heart of the stub. There was another hole six inches
square on the south side. The bird seemed to chisel out a
section three inches wide across the hole and then move
down and cut out another section. The two holes were dug in
about two hours.

Of summertime feeding Ora W. Knight (1908) says: “Except the Flicker this is the only species of Woodpecker I have observed feeding on the ground, but this species likes to tear open the ant hills found in open places in the woods and feed on the ants and their larvæ.” He also says that in the fall these birds eat “dogwood berries, choke and black cherries and other wild fruits and berries, also beechnuts and acorns for which it has a decided fondness.”

Dr. Sutton (1930) says:

The food of this species in Pennsylvania, according to
official examination of four stomachs, is largely of
ants. The stomach and crop of a male specimen weighing
nine ounces, collected at Northumberland, Northumberland
County, on November 10, 1928, contained 469 carpenter
ants (_Camponotus herculaneus_), most of them so recently
swallowed as to permit of counting them easily. The stomach
of a female taken at Aitch, Huntingdon County, on November
30, 1928, contained the remains of at least 153 carpenter
ants, one small carabid beetle, the legs of a small bug
(apparently a squash-bug), and 17 wild grapes, swallowed
whole.

F. E. L. Beal (1911) gave the results of examination of the contents of 80 stomachs collected far and wide throughout the range of the species. Animal food amounted to 72.88 percent; vegetable, 27.12 percent. Beetles made up 22.01 percent of the total, and ants 39.91 percent. As many as 2,600 ants were counted in a single stomach. The ants were “mostly of the larger species that live in decaying timber.” Ants and beetles together made up the bulk of the animal food (61.92 percent).

The Biological Survey (A. L. Nelson) has kindly made reply to my inquiry concerning stomach examinations of the subspecies _abieticola_ alone. Data were available from 23 specimens, three collected in January, two in June, two in July, six in October, eight in November, and two in December. They were collected, two in Canada, two in New Brunswick, four in New York, four in Pennsylvania, six in Michigan, two in Illinois, two in Minnesota, and one in Iowa.

Animal food amounted to 83 percent of the whole; vegetable, 17 percent, with but a trace of gravel (one stomach only). The chief item was ants, principally large black ants, such as _Camponotus_ and _Crematogaster_; this item alone constituted 60 percent of the whole. The animal food otherwise consisted of a variety of beetles and of a very few (2 percent) caterpillars. The vegetable food was made up of wild berries (_Ilex_, _Cassine_, _Vitis cordifolia_, _Nyssa sylvatica_, and _Viburnum nudum_--in all, 11 percent of the whole), mast (2 percent), and rotten wood (4 percent).

Catesby’s (1731) assertion, repeated time and again by the earlier writers, that the pileated woodpecker sometimes pierces the husks of maize standing in the field, was almost certainly based on faulty observation. No modern confirmation is to be found of this or of any other predatory practice. To the contrary, the finding after careful investigation (Beal, 1911) is: “The food of the pileated woodpecker does not interest the farmer or horticulturist, for it is obtained entirely from the forest or the wild copses on its edge. This bird does not visit either the orchard or the grain field, and all its work in the forest helps to conserve the timber * * *. Its killing should be strictly prohibited at all times.”