PILEATED WOODPECKER 
By T. GILBERT PEARSON 
The National Association of Audubon Societies 
I Educational Leaflet No. 94 
;i While lying abed late one morning in camp listening to the lusty 
I 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 
Ij be up and abroad, but we had gone into camp late the evening before 
j after a hard day’s trip, so I was trying to get a little beauty sleep while 
j the guide was away on the lake seeking fish for breakfast. But the 
j 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 
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 Woodoecker had extended down- 
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