PIE-lay-ted…by Brad Marks

Hi folks! We said farewell to Vegas and made our way west again. We had a list of things planned for our stay in the desert, but somehow that city has the ability to crumble up itineraries and set them on fire – this year that was almost literal as the day temps went to 109 and beyond. Ended up being a daily scramble thanks to some RV repairs, additional time spent hunting birds I thought would be easy checks and then a host of other things that gobbled up the time. I am sure we will get back there before too long – note to self, allow more time! On the bright side, birding has been outstanding – 109+1 annual birds since start of the trip, 43 of those being lifers. That puts me at 409+4 for the year – a personal record and we are still relatively early in the year. Oh, an that puts me at #211 in the US Top 100 Birders standings. The downside is the field days have been long and the gravitational force of the pillow strong – my apologies for the delay in responding to comments (I promise to remedy that as soon as I can) and now I will be out of pocket for a bit as we have a family event to take in. Fortunately, Brad is always at the ready to bring you another of their adventures and today’s feature is one of my favorite local feathered friends.

The pillow beckons, take it away Brad…

A couple of years ago, Jan and I were driving on our first trip to Hilton Head Island to escape a week of February winter in Illinois.  We decided to drive to take all of our camera gear.  Driving to Hilton Head takes 16+ hours from where we live, so we broke the trip into two days.  The first night we stayed in Asheville, NC to could go to one of our favorite restaurants for dinner, the Tupelo Honey Café. We were not disappointed.  On the second day, we planned to stop at Congaree National Park in South Carolina we found on a poster our daughter Allyson gave us when we retired.  When we go to a new park, we can cross it off the poster, checklist style.  The park poster contains some of the biggest National Parks (Yosemite and Yellowstone) and some of the lesser-known parks as well.  That’s where we found ourselves.

When we finally arrived at Congaree, we were quickly rewarded with a bit of humor.  There was a sign saying the park wide speed limit was 27 MPH.  Not 25 MPH or 30 MPH, but 27 MPH!  How cool is that!  Arriving at the small parking lot, Merlin was telling us there were many birds in the trees, if only we could see them.  I learned much later that Congaree National Park is one of the nation’s top spots to see very large firefly displays during late May and into June.

When I had finished assembling my camera (Jan was already off taking photos), a family was wandering by from their distant parking space.  The grandfather in the group, seeing the big cameras, asked if I’d seen a specific bird pointing to the other end of the parking lot.  Sometimes the local names and pronunciations of words can catch me off-guard.  British English and American English often have different syllables emphasized.  But when American English (Midwestern) and American English (Southern) collide, I sometimes have no idea where to start.

Here’s where I have to go to phonetic spelling because my ear was simply not tuned into Southern English so early in our trip.  Absolutely no offense intended, things are pronounced differently all around our country.  Pronunciations in the Northeast are sometimes the hardest because they remove certain letters and add them to the ends of other words.  For example, the phrase “park the car” becomes “pahk the cah”.  But the word “area” becomes “airy-er”.  See what I mean? 

In any dialect or accent, that’s a BIG bird! Hit the jump to read more about the PIE!

OK, OK, back to the bird story.  The grandpa in the family asked, “Have you seen the PIE-lay-ted woodpecker?”  Yes, that’s how I remember hearing it, with the emphasis on PIE.  I asked him which bird was he talking about, not trying to be rude.  He repeated, but a bit louder and slower for us northerners, “The PIE-lay-ted woodpecker,” pointing to a large pine tree near the edge of the parking lot.  I said I had not, but was headed there next, having zero idea what I was looking for other than it being a woodpecker.  He wished me good luck seeing it because it was hopping all around the tree last he saw it.  Once my camera was ready, I headed toward the large pine tree.  Jan had already found something else to photograph leaving me on my own.

At the large pine tree, I could see a bird moving around in the dark branches, but I couldn’t really tell what it was in the low light of the day.  Then it flew away.  I had a line on a new bird, potentially a +1, and now it’s gone and flown away.  Swell. 

Dejected, I was walking towards the visitor center, when I see Jan pointing her camera between two parked cars, clicking away like mad.  Back then we had the Nikon D300 cameras.  (If anyone from Nikon is reading this and would like to be a sponsor on Wildlife Intrigued, please contact our Legal department to make arrangements.)  She was getting all of the eight frames per second it would offer.  As I stood next to her, all I could see was wood chips flying from a tree that didn’t look like it could spare the wood.  Then the bird finally showed itself on our side of the tree.

This was female Pileated Woodpecker (Dryocopus pileatus).  This Pileated is not a +1 for us; we have them at home in the woods behind our house.  I hear them all the time, but rarely see them in the open, except in mid-May for unknown reasons.  Ironically, many online websites disagree about the range of the Pileated Woodpecker.  Many of them show a giant hole in their year-round range map right where we live.  Pileateds, however, are all over our woods based on the amount of their excavations I see drilled into trees.  Most sites describe the holes as squares or rectangles.  But the ones I see in our woods are similar to a large upside-down pear shape, or a lightbulb, large enough for the big woodpecker to crawl inside.

One online site pronounces the name as “pie-lee-ay-ted” with all of the syllables having equal emphasis.  I’ve always heard it pronounced “PILL-ee-ay-ted”.  “Toe-may-toe” or “Toe-mah-toe” I suppose.   However it’s properly pronounced, this is a big bird.  Pileated woodpeckers are roughly the size of American Crows and have a wingspan of almost 30 inches (75cm).

Their call is unmistakable.  Think of a cartoon woodpecker laugh from the 1960’s and you have the general idea what to listen for.  When one is sitting on my suet feeders it looks completely out of place, dwarfing the Downy’s and Hairy’s vying for their fair share.  Even the Northern Flickers are much smaller in comparison. 

I notice later in the digital dark room that all of the photos of this woodpecker, working so diligently next to the parking lot, had a slight blur to them.  Then I realized this bird rarely stood still and I hadn’t set the shutter speed, or ISO, or both, fast enough to cleanly stop them in motion.  There has to be an Excedrin moment in here somewhere for the bird with all of that headbanging

We were fortunate that this one must have been accustomed to having humans with large cameras around them.  It seemed completely undeterred in its mission, even with all of the kids running around behind us in the parking lot.  At some point, this tree will be too thin to support itself.  The Pileated is looking for bugs under the bark, but I think it has dug quite a bit deeper than necessary.  They have marvelous hearing and are said to be able to hear the bugs crawling away, hence the head being cocked to the side every now and then, listening for escapees.

Pileated woodpeckers hit the wood with such force that their coiffure flips forward at impact.  This one has the nictating membrane closed over its eye in preparation for any parts flying off the tree at impact. Built-in safety glasses, how clever.  I’d want safety glasses too if this were my primary way of finding food.  Their strong tail feathers help stabilize them as they hang on for dear life during jack-hammering sessions.

This Pileated couldn’t hold still.  Not only was it constantly chipping cookie-sized pieces of wood from the tree, it was hopping in a complete circle around the tree.  These excavations can be so deep that smaller trees will break in half.  She was looking for carpenter ants, woodboring beetle larvae, and other insects.  They also eat wild fruit and nuts and will visit backyard feeders hoping for a quick snack of suet which is where we see “our” woodpecker from time to time.

Pileated woodpeckers form pairs that stay together in a territory year-round.  The males excavate most of the nest from a solid tree.  Females will finish the work inside the tree, chipping away as it goes.  Nest construction takes a few weeks.  However, nests are seldom reused, at least not by Pileated woodpeckers.  The pair will incubate 3-5 eggs per season, for up to 18 days.  The young stay with the parents for another few weeks before striking out on their own.

On our way out I saw the same family again and showed them a few of the photos we were able to capture.  I gave them one of my Wildlife Intrigued cards and said to look online in a few weeks for photos and possibly a story.  Well, two years later and I’m just getting to the story.  Sorry about that.

Fast forward two years; it’s February and we are in South Carolina again.  Jan and I were at the Port Royal Cypress Swamp in the middle of the town of Port Royal.  We had a disappointing trip around the swamp, not from a bird perspective, but from a foliage perspective.  It looked as if someone had sprayed a defoliant around the entire swamp area.  We were feet from the rental car when what seemed like a small black and white plane with bright red highlights flew up the street, within a few feet of the rental car, and landed near the top of a telephone pole. 

Its bright red crest (all the way to its bill) and red cheek stripe were very visible, meaning this one was a male.  Jan took off running towards it.  We were able to get about 50 frames in the tin before it took off again.  Jan caught it as it flew across the street, directly in front of her into the trees at the swamp, ne’er to be seen again.  Well, at least not by us on that particular day.

The flying exit signaled that our photo shoot was over. 

Thank you for reading.  If you want to see more Pileated Woodpecker photos, please visit here. 

Credits

Thanks again to Jan for proofreading and editing.  Thanks to Jan for many of the photos in this story.