Pileated Woodpecker

Identification

A crow-sized woodpecker, mostly slate black, with a brilliant scarlet crest that sweeps back from the forehead into a pointed peak. Broad white stripes run down the sides of the neck and across the face, and the underwings flash white in flight. The male's red crest reaches the forehead and he carries a red stripe on the cheek; the female's crest stops short of the bill and her cheek stripe is black. No other living North American woodpecker comes close to this size — only the probably extinct Ivory-billed is larger.

It specialises in carpenter ants, chopping distinctive rectangular, deeply chiselled holes into standing dead timber to reach the galleries inside. A single trunk may be worked for weeks, and the excavations can be large enough to snap a weakened tree. Because it needs big, old trees, it is a bird of mature forest and beaver ponds with plenty of standing dead wood, and its old nest cavities are later used by wood ducks, owls, martens and bats. Both sexes give a loud, ringing series of 'kuk' notes that slows at the end, plus a high, wild 'wuck' when alarmed; the drumming is a deep, slow roll that carries a long way.

Start with sound: the drumming on hollow trunks and the loud 'kuk-kuk-kuk' are audible well before the bird is visible. A working pileated shows up as a black shape hitching up a dead tree or flying with slow, crow-like wingbeats. Fresh oval and rectangular holes ringed with pale wood chips are a reliable sign that a bird is using the area, and since pairs hold territory year-round, the spot is worth revisiting.