331. Pileated Woodpecker

As large as a crow, Dryocopus pileatus is Canada’s largest woodpecker and a year-round resident here at Leaning Oaks.  Few days go by when we don’t see one or more of these spectacular birds at our suet feeder, or hear the high pitched and nasal “cuk, cuk, cuk, cuk, cuk” call of this woodpecker.  Masters of wood processing their presence can be detected by the large feeding holes they create in trunks of trees.  These can be rectangular in shape, particularly when they are searching for ants in Western Red Cedar trunks. In fact, they can be so rectangular I have encountered people that refuse to believe they aren’t human made.  It isn’t the only type of feeding hole they make and here our largest Douglas-fir trees have large irregular holes in the bark in the lower trunks where Pileated Woodpeckers have been searching for the grubs of wood boring beetles.  They also feed heavily on Carpenter Ants and Dampwood Termites .
Pileated, by the way,  means having a crest covering the pileum (top of a birds head from the base of the bill to the nape).