The Magnificent Log-Cocks

On bleak winter days, when the forest seems empty of life, I am often cheered by the sight and sound of pileated woodpeckers. Looking like miniature pterodactyls, they flash their black-and- white wings over a black-and-white landscape.

Pileateds are also the big mouths of the woodpecker world, their demonic-sounding laughter echoing from ridgetop to ridgetop as they keep in touch with their lifelong partners. In addition, both male and female pileateds are master drummers, and frequently proclaim their dominion over the territory that they hold until they die. And, when one or the other partner does die, the surviving mate holds on to their territory and waits for another mate to appear.

While the pileated pair often remains close throughout the year, they spend the autumn and winter nights in separate roost holes, which are usually old nests. But the male frequently makes sure his mate is safe in her roost before retiring to his, and in the morning, he is the first one up and out to check on his mate, according to a study in Maine by James S. Kellam.

Some studies show that the male pileated has the best roost hole and that he will displace his mate from desirable food sources. That may be why, one winter when we had a large staghorn sumac shrub in our backyard, a female pileated landed on it, sending it swaying because of her weight. She ignored the distant calls of her mate as she poked her dagger-shaped beak into the red fruit and looked furtively up and around and then ducked her head as if she did not want to reveal her location. His calls eventually stopped, and she continued eating for ten minutes before flying to a black walnut tree, calling loudly several times, and finally flying off.

On the other hand, in the winter I often find them eating wild grapes together or foraging on nearby trees and rotten logs in search of ants and beetle larvae. Ants remain their favorite food, especially carpenter ants. George Miksch Sutton, Pennsylvania’s state ornithologist back in the late 1920s, reported finding 469 carpenter ants in the stomach of a male pileated in Northumberland County.

In those days, pileated woodpeckers were “all too rare in Pennsylvania,” Sutton wrote in his Birds of Pennsylvania. “It is given to searching for food in deep, shadowy woods…They are naturally creatures of the wilderness…In looking for the bird, seek the wild, wooded mountains. Listen for the cackling cry…”

Sutton called the pileated woodpecker “the magnificent Log-cock,” but hunters called it “Woodcock” and regarded it as a gamebird. Hunting and the logging of our old growth forests seemed to have doomed the pileated woodpecker “doubtless nearing extinction” Sutton wrote. But unlike its larger cousin–the ivory-billed woodpecker–the pileated adapted to humanity’s presence and was content to use second-growth forests as long as they contained some older trees and plenty of dead snags, even though its optimal habitat is late successional stages of coniferous or deciduous forests.

State and federal legislation also protected pileated woodpeckers from hunting, and now they are more common in Pennsylvania than at any time in the last 150 years, particularly in the southern ridge-and-valley section of the state, according to the annual Breeding Bird Surveys, and have increased a whopping 3.3% per year on BBS routes statewide. During the first Pennsylvania atlasing of breeding birds in 1984-89, atlas volunteers found pileated woodpeckers in every county and physiographic province.

Despite their commonality, these “crow-sized” woodpeckers, the largest or second largest in the United States, depending on whether or not the ivory-bills have survived in the remote swamps of Arkansas, never fail to thrill onlookers. Their large, red crests, even on juveniles, give them a “Woody, the woodpecker” appearance. Males can be distinguished from females by their red foreheads and mustaches and are 10 to 15% heavier.

“Pileated” means “crested,” which comes from their species’ name–pileatus–first bestowed on them by Carl Linnaeus, the Swedish taxonomist, back in the late eighteenth century. But their more popular names, in addition to Sutton’s “log-cock,” included “cock-of-the-woods,” “king-of-the-woods,” “stump-breaker,” “laughing woodpecker,” and, in Juniata County, “cluck-cock.”

Found throughout the forested areas of the United States and Canada, pileateds in the north are larger than those in the south, and some in the west are not as flashy as those in the east, having grayer throats and less barring. Still, they are easy to identify wherever they live.

Although they mate for life, several observers have witnessed elaborate courtship dances. One of the best descriptions was by Edmund W. Arthur on April 14, 1933, who, while driving from Slippery Rock to Grove City, stopped south of Barmore Run when he saw a pileated woodpecker fly across the highway. He watched as a pair “danced” on a knoll “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.”

A more contemporary description, by Maryland birder Lola Oberman, included bark-stripping, hopping, bowing, and head ducking, also while facing each other on the ground. Scientist Lawrence Kilham, who studied both northern and southern pileateds, in New Hampshire and Georgia, observed bill-waving and “woicking” at the same time, which he attributed to courtship.

April seems to be courtship and nest-building time here on our mountain. Often the pair duets, the female higher pitched than the male as they call back and forth. Once, on April 26, as I walked up our driveway, I heard the cackling call of a pileated. A pair was perched on the branch of a fallen oak tree. The male then mounted the female for several seconds. Then he laid his head briefly against hers before flying off. She jumped down to the ground to resume digging in the rotting wood.

Once I thought I had found a nest. As I hiked down Dump Trail on April 14, I spotted a pileated male going into one of three fresh new holes in a large, dead tree. He sat silently looking out of the hole. The following day I heard tapping from inside and again a pileated peered out. After that, I saw no more activity around the tree. Apparently, pileateds excavate several nest starts each spring before the male makes a final selection and does twice as much excavating work as the female.

Bayard Henderson Christy, who observed nesting pileateds in northern Fulton County, noted that the male was more attentive than the female during incubation and that it was he who took over night duty, keeping the usual four white eggs warm. How long they incubate is still disputed. Several observers stated 18 days; Kilham noted 15 to 16 days; and still others hypothesize the black woodpecker’s 12 to 14 days, since it is the pileated’s closest relative.

Once the naked and helpless pileateds hatch, both parents feed them by regurgitation. It takes between 24 and 28 days for them to leave the nest, but they remain a family until the fall. During that time, their parents still feed them and show them how to find their own food.

One mid-June evening at 8:25 p.m., as my husband Bruce and I sat in the living room, demonic laughter and screeches came through the walls. We looked out the front porch door and spotted two pileated fledglings struggling up the opposite sides of the black walnut tree trunk beside the front porch. Then they both flopped into the lilac bush, desperately throwing out their wings to balance themselves as they pushed their way through the shrub, and losing their balance several times. Finally, one flew up to forage on a Seckel pear tree beside the driveway while the other flew off in the opposite direction.

This occurred the same year I thought I had found a nest. So too did other observations of juveniles in our yard such as one on the evening of July 31 when three pileated woodpeckers landed in our front yard, screaming like banshees and chasing each other. Even though they had not nested in the tree I had seen them in, they had obviously nested nearby.

Once the family breaks up, sometime in late September or early October, the youngsters are off in search of their own territory and wander widely.

Often our yard observations of pileateds involve predator chasing. Twice we’ve watched a sharp-shinned hawk try to catch a pileated. Once, in late August, as we ate dinner on the front porch, a sharpie dove at a pileated. The pileated dove right back, and the sharpie fled.

The other chase was more protracted but, in the end, when the sharpie finally lunged at the pileated, the pileated retaliated, but neither bird actually made contact.

Cooper’s hawks are more formidable adversaries, and one September morning a pileated chased a Cooper’s hawk out of a black walnut tree near the shed and up into the yard. Eventually, that bird also retreated.

Other known predators on adult pileateds are red-tailed hawks, northern goshawks, great horned owls, barred owls, gray foxes and American martens. Martens, weasels, red and gray squirrels and black rat snakes attack eggs and young in the nest, but since one parent or the other is almost always in the nest or guarding nearby, even those creatures with other intentions, for example, wood ducks interested in taking over the nest for their own use, have a difficult time.

Four researchers in Texas watched wood ducks, both males and females, continually approach and try to enter an active pileated nest containing three fully feathered young. However, the male pileated regularly perched on a nearby snag and chased them off 12 times. But twice a female wood duck slipped in and the male pileated went in after her. The researchers heard sounds of scuffling and pecking before he evicted her.

Although pileateds won’t share their nest hole with other cavity-nesters, they will share their nest tree, which usually has several cavities excavated in it. For instance, Louise de Kiriline Lawrence, who lived in the wilds of Ontario, wrote in her book To Whom the Wilderness Speaks about a 70-year-old aspen tree that in the last four years of its life hosted six species of cavity nesters including pileateds, hooded mergansers, red-breasted nuthatches, wood ducks, American kestrels, and northern flickers, all of which made use of pileated-drilled holes. But other observers have seen them chase red-bellied woodpeckers, European starlings, great crested flycatchers, and eastern bluebirds from their nest cavity.

During the three interactions I’ve observed between gray squirrels and pileateds, a gray squirrel chased a pileated once from a branch it had landed on and twice while it was foraging on the ground. In one case, I was sitting in the woods when a female pileated swooped in low like a dive bomber, skillfully zooming around trees, and landed about 30 feet behind me to work on a dead log. Hopping awkwardly on the forest floor, she flipped large pieces of bark several feet in the air with what looked like casual elan as bark flew in all directions.

I watched for half an hour before a gray squirrel scampered up and chased the pileated to a nearby tree about a foot from the ground where she spread her wings in typical pileated protest fashion. Undeterred, the squirrel rushed at her, and she flew low to another nearby tree. This time the squirrel moseyed off as if content to have displayed its dominance.

Kilham, on the other hand, watched a pileated chase a gray squirrel from its nest by spreading its wings and raising its crest. And I’ve watched a robin and a northern flicker chase a pileated for what seemed like no good reason.

But then, how much do we know about even the most common birds and their lives? Even though I watch pileateds whenever I can, I have only brief glimpses of their interactions with their families and other wild creatures. Still, late fall and winter, when the leaves are off the trees, provide excellent viewing of these impressive birds.
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Pileated Woodpecker photo by Bev Wigney of Burning Silo – used by permission. You can see a larger version on the original photo page. Browse all of Bev’s nature photos here.

The second image is by the great American wildlife artist Louis Agassiz Fuertes: a preliminary sketch, in charcoal, for Forbush, Edward H., Birds of Massachusetts, Vol. 2, plate 51, courtesy of the Cornell University Library’s Louis Agassiz Fuertes database.

UPDATE: There’s a remarkable series of photos of a female pileated removing bark from a tree at Stokes Birding Blog.