Primeval wings

What looks to be a flying dinosaur is in our forests — an maybe even some of our neighborhoods. Who has ever seen the largest North American woodpecker without thinking of more primitive times? Even its call, echoing loudly through the forest, sounds primeval.

It’s huge size, relative to other woodpeckers, combined with its brightly colored, but oddly crested head, and chisel-like beak makes its appearance reminiscent of reproductions of that flying dinosaur, the pterodactyl.

If its looks weren’t odd enough, science has given it an equally strange name. Pileated woodpecker. It sounds as if its from paleontology, doesn’t it? Other woodpeckers have names such as hairy, downy or ivory-billed that, while they may not be totally accurate (birds do not have hair, and downy woodpeckers show no down), they at least convey a descriptive idea.

Pileated does roughly translate to “wearing a cap.” Perhaps red-capped woodpecker was too similar to red-headed woodpecker (having never seen the bird, you immediately know what you are looking for, and without carrying a dictionary). I would have called it the dinosaur-capped woodpecker, but no one has ever consulted me on bird names.

However, get a few birders together and ask them how to pronounce the name, and that’s when the fun really begins. Heated arguments break out over PIE-lee-ay-tid versus PILL-ee-ay-tid. But I’m here to tell you that it’s PILL, not PIE, no matter what your resident birder know-it-all says. Now that my answer is in print, that should be the end of that.

Despite its size (2-foot wingspan), distinctive markings (red crest, mostly white face with a black body, striking white under-wings), and very loud voice (flicker-like call), the pileated is not one of our more commonly seen woodpeckers. However, if the bird itself is not observed on a walk through any area of dense, mature forest, the remains of its powerful excavations will be.

Huge slabs of bark peeled off dead trees, 4-inch diameter holes cut deep into live trees, and shredded rotten logs and stumps all suggest that a pileated has worked the area. Last winter I was walking a trail through an area of snow-covered windfalls. I heard a muted, soggy pounding nearby and saw the snow littered with a huge amount of splintered heartwood.

As I stared and wondered from eight feet away, a female pileated (its red cap does not extend to its beak and it has a black rather than red mustache) peered around from the other side of the tree, only inches off the snow. The close-range sight of the bird was eerie, and the magnitude of the mess around the tree, while distinctive, was a little alarming. What was it that pterodactyls ate?

One also can be certain they are seeing the work of a pileated by finding large, amazingly rectangular areas of peeled bark, with a more rounded, deeper hole in the center. These are their feeding spots, deep excursions into old wood likely infested with carpenter ants, their main dietary staple.

So, considering their unusual name, appearance, habits and scarcity, even a brief sighting of a pileated woodpecker is a treat. And in most cases, it is not a bird one could set out to find and photograph at will.

Thus, when photographer Tom Davenport, got a call about a possible pileated nest near town, he was, to say the least, excited!

It turned out that a pair of pileated woodpeckers had been seen going into and out of a hole 20 feet up the bare, exposed trunk of a large aspen in a new subdivision of custom homes. The tree stood in the middle of an undeveloped lot, with new construction all around.

The birds, however out of place they seemed, were as oblivious to the goings on around them as were the carpenters, framers and roofers who spent their days within view of the nest hole. The only intruder that seemed to garner notice was an especially inquisitive red squirrel that was probably exploring for denning possibilities.

Tom had no way of knowing what he was getting into, and was just glad to be able to get a few shots of the birds as they came and went that first afternoon. The next morning, early, when the angle of the sun was perfect for nest hole shots, Tom was waiting. And thus it was, day after day, over the next 46 mornings. And I thought that my birding was obsessive!

He started out sitting in his truck, then started using a lawn chair as it became obvious that the woodpeckers had far less interest in him than he had in them. He’d patiently wait (I presume he was patient — I didn’t have the patience to sit with him in his quest), often hours to get a quick view of a bird darting in or out the hole. As few as were the sightings, the photo opportunities were even less.

Pileated nest chambers are large, often 2 feet deep and 8 inches across. Thus an incubating bird cannot be seen from outside the hole. The mate does not hang around outside anxiously pacing, but has its own roosting cavity somewhere else.

Incubation, done mostly by the male (for some reason, all night-time incubation is done by the male), lasts for two and a half weeks. If it was a boring time for the parents-to-be, it must have been excruciatingly so for Tom, who had to wonder every early morning if this would be the day the birds would give up on their atypical, noisy, ever-changing neighborhood. But each day he saw enough to bring him back the next.

Suddenly, both parents were out of the nest, making frequent trips back, apparently with food for their young. This process usually goes on for about four weeks, but again with a deep nest cavity and altricial (naked, totally dependent) young, there wasn’t much to see, let alone photograph. What Tom did see most often was a streaking bird with a speed and form similar to an attacking F-15.

Eventually the sound of squabbling chicks became evident from the hole, and later the growing chicks began to stick their heads out, anticipating a meal of regurgitated ants, or just trying to get a look at the strange creature in the lawn chair behind the tripod.

At the end of their six and a half weeks in that cavity, first as eggs, then as ugly little big-eyed, wrinkled, featherless chicks, and finally as handsome teenage woodpeckers, first the female and then the male young left the nest. At the coaxing and withholding of food by the adults, the fledglings flew off and never returned to the area.

After more hours than I’d care to consider, Tom had the photos that accompany this article, a sadness for the loss of his adopted family, and a better appreciation of the biology of these birds than hardly any of the rest of us will ever experience. Who else has had the chance to watch the passing of the generations of a dinosaur?

This April Tom went back to see what had become of the neighborhood. People and their children were now living in it. The aspen had been spared and there seemed to be some activity at the hole. Pileated woodpeckers do not reuse nest cavities — there must be quite a mess after a whole childhood is passed in there — but leave them to other wildlife less suited to making their own accommodations.

But, as Tom reminisced, he had a sudden shot of excited anticipation at a movement in the hole. Suddenly, out popped the head of a woodpecker.

It wasn’t one of his beloved pileated’s, but the head of a flicker. Smaller and better suited to life in man’s neighborhood, the next generation of cavity dwellers had already set up housekeeping.

Tom wishes them the same success the pileated’s had in their old home, but I can assure you that he won’t be there for 46 days recording it. I suspect that the other new neighbors, the wingless ones, would not be as tolerant of his presence or his camera as had been the large, odd woodpeckers.