Pill-eated or Pie-liated Woodpecker? Who Cares?

This post is based on one that originally ran on March 9, 2014, on the blog of New Jersey Audubon's Scherman Hoffman sanctuary. The NJA blog was significantly overhauled since then and the archives were deleted. However, I was able to keep a copy so this can again see the light of day.

The other day, reading posts on the New Jersey Birders Facebook page, I saw a discussion over how to pronounce the word "pileated," as in the largest type of woodpecker you can see in New Jersey. This is one of those arcane discussions people will get into, like whether to say CARIB-be-an or Carib-BE-an. (The Gershwins wrote a whole song about such matters.)

Male pileated woodpecker (RE Berg-Andersson)

In the case of this woodpecker, there are those who say pie-liated and those who say pill-eated. I fall on the side of the Pillers, just because I find the word Pill easier. But it doesn't really matter either way because when you see one of these big birds - crow-sized, black and white with large red crest - the first thing out of your mouth tends to be "my God!" or "what IS that?"

This back and forth on how to say its name - the upshot was it can be said either way - got me thinking about a post I wrote for another blog back in 2014. March is when you start to hear a lot of woodpeckers, as well as other birds, calling or singing out, announcing their territories. In the case of the pileated, you will also hear it whacking into trees to pull out its favorite food, carpenter ants.

So here is some of what I wrote back in 2014:

Whether you are walking in a forest or park or sitting in your suburban backyard, there is nothing more distinctive than the sound of a pileated woodpecker whacking a hole in a tree, seeking the carpenter ants within.

Everything about the pileated is BIG. It is about the size of a crow, so when it flies over you in the woods it gets your attention. It has a large crest and a large bill that it uses to make large, rectangular holes in trees. If it is a male, he will have a little red "mustache" the female lacks. Sometimes the sound of one chopping into a tree reminds me of a woodsman with an ax. (Watch Jim O’Malley’s video of a pileated woodpecker here.)

Even its laugh is big. It carries far whether in the forest or the backyard. In fact, most times it is the laugh that alerts me to the bird because it’s otherwise rather shy. I am sure the creator of the old “Woody Woodpecker” cartoon character had the pileated’s crest and laugh in mind.

I was once walking in my town to the morning train to work when I discovered a pileated, at eye level, whacking away at a tree. I was able to walk within five feet, so close I could see it was a female. She ignored me. There must’ve been a lot of ants in that tree. “That’ll be down in a year,” I thought. In fact, it took two.

A tree full of holes is a goner. The very fact the woodpecker is on it shows the tree is infested with carpenter ants, and that weakened tree will die. But those holes also keep others, including smaller birds and even bats, alive because they create temporary shelters. So even a dead tree has its uses.

As for the name, whichever way you pronounce it the word “pileated” means having a crest covering the pileum, which is the top of the head of a bird from the bill to the nape.

The pileated is the largest woodpecker we have in the U.S., unless you believe the ivory-billed woodpecker is still around. Back in 2004 it was believed one was found in an Arkansas swamp decades after it was presumed extinct. The effort to locate this woodpecker was the subject of the 2005 "The Grail Bird: The Rediscovery of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker" and other books. Birders were excited about this. Many wanted to head down and find it. Even David Allen Sibley created an addendum on the ivory-billed you could download and add to his bird guidebook.

Female pileated. I confirmed this with my
binoculars after I took the picture. (Margo D. Beller)

According to “The Grail Bird,” which I read, the kayaker who got a glimpse was asked if he really saw a “Lord God” bird. Wasn’t it more likely to be the more common pileated? He claimed it was not a pileated. If you look at John J. Audubon’s portrait of the ivory-billed and compare it to the photograph above, you can see the difference between the two woodpeckers.

However, Audubon, writing about the pileated in his journal, said its flight is “powerful, and, on occasion, greatly protracted, resembling in all respects that of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker.”

Audubon has three ivory-billeds in his portrait. To get the birds he had to shoot them – with a gun. No digital cameras back then. We don’t know how many ivory-billeds were killed before he got the portrait he wanted but we do know from his journal that Audubon regretted killing any more birds than absolutely necessary.

Unfortunately, others didn’t think the same way and the ivory-billed is likely extinct. Not so the pileated, of which Audubon used four birds in his portrait. In his journal he wrote:

It would be difficult for me to say in what part of our extensive country I have not met with this hardy inhabitant of the forest. Even now, when several species of our birds are becoming rare, destroyed as they are, either to gratify the palate of the epicure, or to adorn the cabinet of the naturalist, the Pileated Woodpecker is every where to be found in the wild woods, although scarce and shy in the peopled districts.

Luckily for us in “the peopled districts” of New Jersey, these woodpeckers are still “every where to be found” today. It is up to all of us who love birds and open spaces to keep it that way.

Waiting for Timberdoodles

This post is based on one that originally ran on April 19, 2017, on the blog of New Jersey Audubon's Scherman Hoffman sanctuary. The NJA blog was significantly overhauled since then and the archives were deleted. However, I was able to keep a copy so this can again see the light of day. 

“The woodcock is a living refutation of the theory that the utility of a game bird is to serve as a target, or to pose gracefully on a slice of toast. No one would rather hunt woodcock in October than I, but since learning of the sky dance I find myself calling one or two birds enough. I must be sure that, come April, there be no dearth of dancers in the sunset sky.”  -- Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac 1949

American woodcock (free photo courtesy National Park Service)

I expect certain things in late March. I expect daffodils and other early bloomers to start poking up through the leaf litter, which means I have to remove said litter for the daffodils to grow and be seen better. I expect to see and hear more robins as the snow melts and the exposed, softened ground allows them to pick off worms and other things trying to get away from the rising water table. I expect to start seeing the first reports of early migrants including phoebes and pine warblers.

And then there is the American woodcock. This time of year is when I expect to start seeing reports of this odd-looking ground bird doing its mating peent and acrobatic flights into the dawn or dusk as it tries to interest a mate. Those reports just started this week. The woodcock's mating season here in NJ should last into April.

Within walking distance of my house, on the former Greystone property, there are brushy areas where a male woodcock would display well. I just need to get out of the house into the cold to watch for them. However, about two years ago MH and I learned of a place where many woodcocks were being reported and a woodcock walk was to be held. MH and I attended and my report of our visit, for another blog, is below:

The sun goes down as a warm early-April Sunday that begins to chill thanks to a clear sky. We're on a damp path near a small pond - Esox Pond, to be exact, in Somerset County's 950-acre Lord Sterling Park - looking at a brushy field and waiting for an American Woodcock to start its mating call.

From late February to about May, these plump, Robin-sized, land-based shorebirds, whose brown, mottled covering helps them blend well in cover, do something very unusual as they attempt to perpetuate the species.

Pine warbler - not yet, but soon (RE Berg-Andersson)

To eat they probe for earthworms with their long bills in brushy fields, near wetlands, which is why Lord Sterling naturalist Ben Barkley and Mike Anderson, director of New Jersey Audubon's Scherman Hoffman sanctuary, have led a dozen of us to this spot, where Barkley knows some males like to congregate. According to Barkley, there could be as many as 30 Woodcocks at Lord Sterling, while Scherman Hoffman has about a dozen, including two males heard within the last few days from the fields by the Vernal Pool, according to Anderson.

As the sun goes down and we wait, we see Great Blue Herons, a Cooper's Hawk and Wood Ducks, among others, fly over as they look for a good place for the night's roost.

Robins are calling. As the darkness spreads, male frogs - Wood Frogs and Spring Peepers, at this time of year - begin a loud, continuous chorus as they try to attract mates.

In the middle of this cacophony, at around 7:30 p.m., we hear the first nasal peent of the Woodcock. We have been led here earlier to get the birds used to our presence, ahead of the hoped-for show.

One peent leads to another and then six more before there is silence. No one makes a sound as the sky gets darker. Then the peents begin again, this time from another direction. And then another. Soon there  are four or five male Woodcocks calling.

But that is not what we are there to see.

When I have seen an American Woodcock, it is usually when it is almost literally underfoot. Because they blend into the leaf litter so well, you frequently don't see one until it flies up at your approach - as one did a few years ago near the entrance to the Scherman Hoffman yellow trail along the Passaic River- or scurries away, its crunching of the underbrush the only way I could find it.  I've never been able to photograph Scolopax minor, even on the very early morning a few springs ago when a Woodcock was peenting from the roof of my house!

At dawn or dusk during breeding season, the Woodcock shows why it got its other name of Timberdoodle.

Imagine a 9-inch elephant (as seen sitting from the back) sprouting small wings, taking a giant leap into the sky - 200 to 300 feet - and then coming back to earth in a zig-zag pattern while its three outer primary feathers make a twittering sound as it lands on or near its jumping-off point.

"There it goes," said Anderson. While I didn't hear the sound of the wings I did see the bird - once I realized it was not a particularly large bat flying where the little bit of remaining light allowed me to see it.

Lord Sterling Park at dusk, just before the Timberdoodle show.
(RE Berg-Andersson)

As with the calling, once one started flying, so did other males. One female flew in low to investigate. Once she and a male mate, she will build a nest on the ground and lay three to five eggs. She will sit on the nest for three weeks. The hatched young will leave the nest after two weeks.

According to Barkley, Woodcocks are considered a "resident" species in New Jersey, although individuals do migrate.

Woodcock is not an endangered bird but its life is not easy. According to the New Jersey Division of Fish and Wildlife, the Woodcock can be hunted during migratory duck season in Autumn.  The state lumps Woodcock in with Rails, Snipes, Coots and Moorhens in its rules of what licensing is required.

According to Mike Anderson, overhunting is just one reason for the decline in the Woodcock population. Another is disappearing habitat. There are fewer brushy fields, and those that were around 40 years ago are becoming wooded areas that, in turn, are cut down for housing developments.

Places like Scherman Hoffman, Lord Sterling and the nearby federal Great Swamp, as well as other parts of the National Wildlife Refuge system, are managed to help the Woodcock population, Anderson said.

Meanwhile, in the darkness there are male Woodcocks flying around everywhere. One takes off in front of us and I follow it with binoculars as it rockets into the dim light and disappears, only to suddenly swoop down and buzz us about 10 feet away as it lands. Barkley puts on his flashlight and there he sits, the star of the show, the Timberdoodle, still as a statue, waiting for the light to be turned off.

But we don't want it off. We want to look at the mottling of its back and take a picture of this strange creature few of us see. Several of us grab our phones but we're too late when it silently takes off for the brush.

"Can't do much better than that," Barkley said. And so we leave to a mounting chorus of Woodcock, Wood Frog and Peepers calling in the cold darkness of a not-so-silent night.

Lettuce Start the Growing Season

It usually takes me a few days to a week to get used to the changes in the light caused by the start of Daylight Savings Time. Just as the light started waking me at 6:30 am, we changed the clock ahead and now I am back to rising after 7am, or in the dark before then. Now the daylight lasts until close to 7pm, which would be great if I was doing things outside, such as working in the garden. However, despite one or two days of above-average temperatures, it has generally been too cold to do any work outside aside from adding to my brush pile.

Optimism (Margo D. Beller)

And yet, going to the local Agway to replenish my seed and suet supplies, I bought a package of lettuce seeds.

I grew lettuce in a planter years ago and it did rather well considering I planted it at the wrong time of year. But the other year I tried again at the right time of year and the seeds did not germinate. I have since learned lettuce seeds have a short shelf life.

But I wanted to try again. I was tired of paying a lot of money for organic lettuce sold by a local farmer (using a protective tent) at the winter farm market this past season or buying less-than-satisfactory lettuce from who-knows-where at the supermarket. MH will eat lettuce on his sandwiches and it is another good way of getting him to eat greens. The cost of a package of seeds is cheaper than buying seedlings, even if not all the planted seeds germinate.

Lettuce, I am told in my reference books, is one of the easiest plants to grow. You can get two crops - planted in early spring, it grows into the summer; planted in late summer, it grows into the early winter. Lettuce likes the cold.

Nowadays I like trying to plant things as a way of coping with an over-mechanized and -technical society. If successful, I grow food. If not, I learn what not to do for next time. If successful growing lettuce, I may try other crops that cost a lot to buy at the farm markets such as chard and spinach.

Mainly I am feeling the itch to get my hands dirty. Although the thought of the spring cleanup work I'll have to do tires me, seeing the daffodils and other early bloomers poking their noses above the soil gives me incentive to make them more visible. I want to finally put the pepper pots back outside. I want to plant the dahlias I've stored in the garage.

I want the warmer weather so I can use those longer daylight hours productively, working in the garden and looking for birds. Soon enough the migrants will be passing through on their way north.

My brother-in-law in NH is waiting for the sap to start rising in his maples so he can start on this year's sugaring. I notice the maples in my yard have begun flowering, putting red coloring against the blue sky. Maybe the sap is starting to rise in me, too.