Pileated Woodpeckers

I don’t understand why people don’t go wild over pileated woodpeckers. They look like little pterodactyls. They undulate as they fly, with a flap and glide pattern. Their call is a loud KA-KA-KA and when they drum on trees, which they do to defend territories and attract mates, the sound reverberates through the forest. People say with enthusiasm they’ve seen a great horned owl, a hooded warbler or an indigo bunting, but I’ve never heard anyone say, “I saw a pileated woodpecker.”

“You’re right,” said Jim Kellam, a professor of biological science at St. Vincent College in Latrobe. “People say they’ve seen a bald eagle or a penguin. Maybe the pileated isn’t as obvious or visible to people. Or maybe they’re not paying attention”.

And once you learn something about pileated woodpeckers, the bird becomes even more interesting.

Pileated woodpeckers (Dryocopus pileatus) are large black birds with black and white stripes on long necks and a bright red crest. (Pileated comes from the Latin “pileatus” and means capped or having a crest.) The male has a red mustache. When they fly, you can see white underwings. We nearly killed them all off in the 18th and 19th centuries by clearing our Pennsylvania forests, but their numbers have rebounded. Now they stay in Pennsylvania year-round and mate for life.

The bird is big, up to 19 inches in length with a 30-inch wingspan, the largest woodpecker in North America, unless the ivory-billed woodpecker still exists in the South, about which Kellam is doubtful. That’s because the new evidence that has tried to prove ivory-billed woodpeckers still exist was made with automated recording devices, not sounds heard in person by human beings. The evidence includes their call and a double tap that only ivory-billed woodpeckers do, but such sounds, Kellam said, don’t “preclude a weird blue jay.”

Ornithologists have brought forth other proof too — including foraging signs that Kellam said one investigator went to great lengths to show only an ivory-bill could do. There are also photographs and videos, “but they are all grainy and could be interpreted as pileated woodpeckers.” Even if they do exist, Kellam believes, “in a biological sense it doesn’t matter because there are so few out there that they can’t be sustained over evolutionary time.”

For nesting and roosting, male and female pileated woodpeckers excavate new oblong holes every year into large, usually dead or dying trees at least 15 feet up. The nest is filled with wood chips and sawdust. “There’s no extra insulation; they don’t need a fluffy bed,” Kellam said. Both sexes incubate the 3–5 white eggs and feed the chicks. After the chicks have fledged, one of the pair — usually the male — uses the nest for roosting purposes. The male kindly offers the female the previous year’s roosting hole — a hole that Kellam said might have rotted or leaked or been taken over by another animal, such as a squirrel or a raccoon. “If a raccoon is in the tree, you want to go to Plan B,” Kellam said.

Wood ducks, owls, martens and other animals also reuse those nesting holes. Swifts or bats might even share the holes with woodpeckers. This contribution to our forest ecosystem makes the pileated woodpecker a “keystone species.”

Pileated woodpeckers also bore rectangular-shaped holes into dead or living trees looking for their favorite food — carpenter ants — but also beetle larvae, caterpillars, flies and termites, among other insects. “That woodpecker destroyed my tree,” people say to Kellam. “No,” he said. “Bugs destroyed that tree.” Pileated woodpeckers eat nuts and fruits too, such as blackberries, elderberries, and poison ivy.

Like most woodpeckers, they have the ability to land vertically on the sides of trees thanks to feet that are zygodactyl — two toes pointing forward and two pointing backward. Their toenails are curved and clawed too, which helps them grip and climb. Long, stiff tails act as anchors. The bird has an extra, translucent eyelid or nictitating membrane that moistens and protects the eyes from dust and debris, like wood chips.

But I think the best feature of the pileated woodpecker is its tongue, which, according to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, is one of the longest relative to body size in the bird world. The four-inch tongue allows the woodpecker to reach deeply into the holes they drill. It’s barbed and the saliva is sticky. “Like a pipe cleaner,” Kellam said, “with little protrusions pointed backward, which, when retracted, brings food back into its mouth.” The tip of the tongue is made of keratin. “The tongue gets a lot of wear and tear so it regrows, like your fingernails,” he explained.

The tongue also acts as a stabilizer and shock absorber and helps protect the woodpecker’s brain from injury. When not in use, the tongue wraps around the back of the woodpecker’s skull thanks to a wishbone-shaped bone called the hyoid. Force is absorbed also by the woodpecker’s bill, which is flexible, and its upper and lower mandibles, which split. Strong neck muscles help transmit the force all the way down the body into that long, stiff tail.

Scientists are using video cameras in slow motion to study the speed and force of the woodpecker’s drumming. They’re trying to figure out how the woodpecker avoids concussion, and they hope such information might help people with that ailment. Kellam noted, however, that there are notable differences in our anatomy. For one, unlike us, woodpeckers have very little cerebral fluid, so what works for a bird may not work for us.

When drumming, Kellam said, pileated woodpeckers try to find surfaces that resonate a long distance — hence, the drumming on drain pipes or gutters. “They’re more likely to find a mate with a louder sound,” he said. Drumming on a hollow tree also signals that such a tree has food in it and is, therefore, a good habitat. “The more decayed, the better food.”

I asked if the predominance of the emerald ash borer might be helping the pileated woodpecker population. “It’s a hypothesis,” he said, “but it makes sense to all woodpeckers.” He said ornithologists saw the same pattern during Dutch elm disease (a fungus spread by elm bark beetles). Overall, the pileated population is increasing, not drastically, but enough that the bird can now be found not only deep in the woods, but in neighborhoods, urban areas, and in Schenley Park in the middle of Pittsburgh. “They invite us into their world,” Kellam said. They’ve done so by adapting to humans, but Kellam warns that the population will decline if we continue to clear lots of trees.

So, look up! Pay attention to these fabulous creatures swooping and gliding overhead. Listen for their drumming, the loudest of all woodpeckers — faster at the beginning and then fading away — 15 beats a second. Even if you don’t see them, at least you’ll know they’re nearby.

But wait, you ask, how do I pronounce “pileated”? A hard “I” or a soft one? PILE-eated? Or PILL-eated? My husband says PILE-eated; I say PILL-eated. (Tom-Ato/tom-ahto.)

The Oxford English Dictionary lists PILE-eated first, he said.

“Either,” Kellam said.

“If it bothers you when people say it differently than you do, lighten up,” wrote the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Kevin McGowan in Dr. Language Person’s Guide to Bird Name Pronunciations. “They’re just birds, for goodness sakes, and THEY don’t care what you call them.”

I think I’ll just stick with my daughter’s childhood mispronunciation of the word woodpecker. She called them “pood-whackers.”
That, too, solves the disagreement with my husband.