Now That’s a Woodpecker!
by Doug Reeves, assistant chief, DNR Wildlife Division
A crow-sized bird lit on the specially made suet feeder, a flash of white on its otherwise dark wings. A good look revealed a long beak, bright red crest on the head and mostly white neck and throat. A pileated woodpecker! That would be a good sighting any day. At this location though, it is a regular occurrence because the suet bags are attached to a rough-sawn board that makes a great place for the big woodpeckers to grip so they can feed. They come every day to this spot.
When you see your first pileated woodpecker, your thought might well be, “Now that is a serious woodpecker!” Michigan’s other woodpeckers are substantially smaller, starting with the downy and working up through the hairy, red-headed, black-backed and red-bellied woodpeckers and also including the migratory yellow-bellied sapsucker and northern flicker for good measure. Over the years several people have insisted to me that they have seen ivory-billed woodpeckers in Michigan. Ivory-billed woodpeckers never did nest in Michigan, and if they still exist at all, anywhere, they are extremely rare. There is no doubt that our birds are pileateds.
Woodpeckers are primary cavity nesters, meaning they carve out the holes that they nest and roost in. When they are done with the holes, other birds – the secondary cavity nesters – use the cavities. Birds like chickadees, white-breasted nuthatches, house wrens, eastern bluebirds, tree swallows and great-crested flycatchers build their nests in on the holes the smaller woodpeckers make. In the case of pileated woodpeckers, the cavities they create are mostly used by wood ducks, screech owls, American kestrels and hooded mergansers, along with various squirrels, mice and other wildlife.
Woodpeckers also feed by burrowing into or under the bark of trees and sometimes into the wood of the tree to get insects and insect larvae. Pileated woodpeckers – with their long beaks – create holes, frequently rectangular in shape, some of which are 4-5 inches deep and a foot or more long. In northern Michigan the signature pileated woodpecker indicator is a white cedar tree with rectangular excavations carved into it. In those cases, I presume the woodpeckers are seeking out carpenter ants and their larvae in the heart of the tree. But pileated woodpeckers are not particular about the type of tree they carve. In the southern Lower Peninsula, where white cedars are rare to nonexistent, their activity seems most evident in decadent aspen, dead ash, basswood and silver maple trees, but it is not unusual to find evidence of their activity in pin oak, white pine or any other tree that has become occupied by insects. Frequently a pile of woodchips at the base of a tree is the first indication that you should look up and see what the woodpeckers have done. I never cease to be amazed what a woodpecker can do with its beak. Even after reading about the mechanisms that protect their heads from damage, I find it incredible.
Pileated woodpeckers live in places where trees have grown to a relatively large size. It has been my observation that they are most likely to be found in places where there are trees 14 inches in diameter or larger that are suitable for excavating nesting holes. Pileated woodpeckers were rare in Michigan following the logging era, but as forests have grown and aged, their population has greatly increased. Today they are quite common and are found pretty much throughout the state wherever habitat is suitable. In Saginaw County, where I live, it is not uncommon to see pileated woodpeckers flying between woodlots. A large silver maple in our front yard has been used many times by the big woodpeckers as they fly across open country between wooded areas. So, while I tend to think of these birds as residents of large unbroken forests, that is not necessarily the case.
I was in Cheboygan County when I observed the woodpecker that began this story. Moments later a second and then a third pileated woodpecker showed up in adjacent trees. Three pileated woodpeckers within a few feet of one another! Except at a nest where the babies had their heads sticking out of a nest hole, I had not seen three of those big woodpeckers together in one place. That was a noteworthy sighting, and another pleasant interlude with Michigan’s amazing wildlife!
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