PILEATED WOODPECKER 



By T. GILBERT PEARSON 



THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF AUDUBON SOCIETIES 

 Educational Leaflet No. 94 



While lying abed late one morning in camp listening to the lusty 

 shouts of a Florida Wren, I became aware of a muffled knocking sound 

 often repeated. It was the time of day when a field naturalist should 

 be up and abroad, but we had gone into camp late the evening before 

 after a hard day's trip, so I was trying to get a little beauty sleep while 

 the guide was away on the lake seeking fish for breakfast. But the 

 Wren would not permit slumber, so with mixed feelings of admiration 

 and annoyance, I lay and listened to its wild expressions of merriment. 

 The mysterious pounding finally caused me to get up and go out of 

 the tent to discover its source. In a little while I 

 found, about sixty yards away, a tall dead tree, old Ne j t 



and greatly decayed. Perhaps fifty feet from the 

 ground was a fresh round hole, while numerous fragments of wood 

 were scattered on the carpet of dry forest leaves beneath. It was 

 clear that the pounding was going on inside this tree and at some distance 

 from the ground. 



Bringing an axe from the camp I gave the tree several vigorous 

 strokes. Soon there emerged from the entrance-hole a Pileated Wood- 

 pecker. After bounding away a few yards it returned and alighted just 

 above its nesting-hole. It surveyed me in a startled manner for a few 

 seconds and then flew to a nearby tree. Its shouts soon brought 

 its mate, but the wary birds did not tarry long. In a few minutes the 

 forest had swallowed them. For five days we lay in camp at this 

 spot, and while we rarely saw the Pileated Woodpeckers it was only 

 necessary to remain in the tent a short time at almost any period of the 

 day in order to hear again that muffled knocking sound, made by one 

 of the birds as it chiseled away at its work. 



The birds were not sufficiently frightened or annoyed by our pres- 

 ence to desert the nest they probably were building, but it was evident 

 that they wished to take no chances by allowing themselves to be seen. 



There possibly may have been eggs in the nest at the time, for these 

 Woodpeckers are known to dig away at the walls of their nesting-cavity 

 with their bills after the eggs have been laid. 



With what fortunes the birds met in their attempt to rear a brood 

 that year I did not learn, but doubtless they had a successful season. 

 Eight months later, when passing through the same territory, I visited 

 the spot and found that the old tree had fallen. Cutting away the wood 

 I discovered that the cavity made by the Woodpecker had extended down- 



