WOODPECKERS 
Like other woodpeckers, the pileated woodpecker is always in a hurry. 
Preoccupied with the serious business of getting a living and building a 
home, this dull black bird with the scarlet crest climbs hastily up the trunks 
of dead trees, strips off bark, pecks into the dead wood in search of insects 
and their eggs, hops on the ground looking for ant hills, or flies about 
seeking wild fruit and berries. It is a solitary, shy bird, incapable of being 
tamed. Its flight is direct but rather slow. 
The pileated woodpecker’s long, powerful bill contains a barbed 
tongue that can extend two and one-half inches beyond it. As the bill bores 
a hole in some dead tree, the long tongue, which is covered with a sticky 
saliva, draws out the insects. These birds are exceedingly beneficial to 
man for their insect destroying habits. They never attack live wood, though 
when a dead tree is not available instinct may lead them to subject a tele¬ 
graph or fence pole to the trip-hammer-like blows of their bills. So expert 
is the pileated woodpecker in stripping trees that it can peel ten feet of 
bark from a dead pine tree in fifteen minutes. 
This woodpecker’s note is a loud, nasal kuk-kuk. When two birds 
meet, they make a sound like wichew. Woodpeckers mate from April to 
June, when the male will pursue the female and seek to attract her by 
drumming with his bill against a tree. The woodpeckers nest in secluded 
swamps, digging an apartment out of a dead tree, usually at a great height. 
This home is invariably bedded with fine wood chips. Often a pair will 
return to the same nest year after year, cleaning out and sometimes enlarg¬ 
ing the old nest. The eggs are white and three to five in number. While the 
female sits on them, the male entertains her by drumming. He too takes 
his turn sitting on the eggs, though his mate makes no music to divert him. 
The young are fed by regurgitation and remain in the nest until full- 
fledged. 
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