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Pileated Woodpecker Dryocopus pileatus One day many years ago, before I was a birdwatcher, I glimpsed a live cartoon character, Woody Woodpecker, while driving through the Big Woods. No one who was with me saw the bird, and I later thought I must have imagined it. Now I know it was a pileated woodpecker , the largest woodpecker in North America next to the similarly shaped ivory-bill that once inhabited much of the Southeast and was thought to be extinct until February 11, 2004, when it was found again in the Big Woods of eastern Arkansas more than sixty years after the last confirmed sighting. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with the clearing of forests, the pileated seemed to be heading toward extinction also, but in the twentieth century it began adapting to the proximity of people and second-growth forests, where only a few large trees were present, thus ensuring its survival. It now inhabits hardwood, conifer, and mixed forests, woodlots, and parks. Any time of year, I can hear the pileated’s irregular, ringing cuk, cuk, cuk calls and see it flying through my woods. I find evidence of the bird’s presence in wood chips at the bases of dead trees where it has excavated sections as much as seven feet long while foraging for carpenter ants, its favorite food. Besides ants and other insects, this species also eats wild fruits, berries, nuts, and suet. The pileated defends its large territory with slow, powerful drumming and penetrating calls. Courtship activity includes gliding flight displays, crest raising, head swinging, bobbing around trunks, and wing spreading, which shows off the flashy white undersides of its wings. Both sexes excavate the nest cavity, which is new each year but in the same area as previous years. The entrance is usually oval and the depth ranges from ten to twentyfour inches. Both adults incubate the three to five eggs for about eighteen days and feed the nestlings, which fledge about four weeks after hatching but remain with their parents for two to three more months. In 1987, I discovered a pileated nestling poking its big head out of a hole about fifty feet high in a barkless elm near one of my woodland paths. Soon the father arrived with food, which it jabbed down the baby’s throat. Amid much loud begging, the mother arrived with more food. She had a flaming red crest like the father but lacked his red mustache . I returned home and called members of our fledgling bird club, who came to watch and take photographs. The pileated woodpecker has attracted the attention of people across its range from Minnesota south to Texas and east to the Atlantic Ocean. Some of the other names by which this bird is known—logcock, cock of the woods, and great god woodpecker—attest to the impression it has made. 43 ...

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