The pileated woodpecker (Dryocopus pileatus) is best known for its prominent red crest, contrasting sharply with its white-and-black striping, black body, and black wings with white patches. The name, pileated, refers to the red crest covering the top of the bird’s head (the pileum). Both males and females have the red crest, but it extends further forward on the male’s head. The male also has a red “mustache” stripe next to its bill; the female has a black stripe.

The largest woodpecker living in North America, the pileated woodpecker does not migrate. Its range extends throughout the eastern United States, much of Canada, and along parts of the Pacific Coast and northern Rockies. The population and range of the pileated woodpecker have expanded as deforested areas have recovered over the last century.

Large trees are required for the pileated woodpecker to satisfy its diet of wood ants and beetle larvae. Pileated woodpeckers excavate large, rectangular holes to reach the galleries where insects live within the tree. Once the woodpecker locates its “prey,” it extends its long, barbed, sticky tongue into the galleries to extract the ants or beetle larvae.

A pair of pileated woodpeckers will defend a territory of 100 to 250 acres. They mark territory with slow, loud drumming on resonant trees. Both males and females drum as part of courtship and either sex may drum to solicit mating or in response to an intruder near a nest.

In addition to drumming, pileated woodpeckers communicate with calls. The classic pileated call has been described as “loud, escalating shrieks” or “whinnying.” Shorter calls that sound like “wuk, wuk” or “cuk, cuk” signal alarm, or the bird may use them when marking a territorial boundary. The cuk-cuk-cuk calls are also used in flight and when landing. This call often alerts me to the presence of a pileated woodpecker before it flies into view.

As spring approaches, both the male and the female work on the nest cavity, fifty feet up in a large, dead tree, and they may be seen tossing wood chips out of the hole as they work. Both woodpeckers incubate the eggs and feed the chicks. The chicks fledge after about a month but depend on their parents for several more months. The woodpeckers abandon the nest hole after one season, making the cavity available to other species of birds and mammals for roosting or nesting. These include owls, ducks, bats, smaller birds like chickadees, and mammals, including mice, squirrels, and even raccoons.