Part 23

_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.”