Pileated Woodpecker

Description:

The pileated woodpecker is a large, mostly black woodpecker native to North America. An insectivore, it inhabits deciduous forests in eastern North America, the Great Lakes, the boreal forests of Canada, and parts of the Pacific Coast. Pileated Woodpeckers are mostly black with white stripes on the face and neck and a flaming-red crest. Males have a red stripe on the cheek. In flight, the bird reveals extensive white underwings and small white crescents on the upper side, at the bases of the primaries.

Habitat:

Pileated woodpeckers occupy areas with mature, late successional forests that contain a lot of dead trees, or snags. particularly those which have become infected with heart rot. They typically excavate one large nest each year in the cavities of these snags, thus creating habitat for other large cavity nesters as they move on to new nest sites. The pileated woodpecker occupies both coniferous and deciduous forests and they can also be found along river corridors. Its primary food consists of carpenter ants living in fallen timber, dead roots, and stumps. It is found on each National Forest in the Sierra Nevada and therefore its range is quite diverse.

Notes:

Diet: The Pileated Woodpecker's primary food is carpenter ants, supplemented by other ants, woodboring beetle larvae, termites, and other insects such as flies, spruce budworm, caterpillars, cockroaches, and grasshoppers. Predators: American martens, weasels, squirrels, rat snakes, and gray foxes. Free-flying adults have fewer predators, but can be taken in some numbers by Cooper's hawks, northern goshawks, red-shouldered hawks, red-tailed hawks, great horned owls, bald eagles, golden eagles and barred owls. Pileated woodpeckers play an important role within their ecosystems as a keystone species by excavating nesting and roosting cavities that are subsequently used by many other birds and by many small mammals -- including the rare Pacific fisher, as well as reptiles, amphibians, and invertebrates.