A Knocking at the Tree

A woodpecker's drilling/Echoes To/the mountain clouds.-- Haiku poet Dakotsu Iida

Around 4 o'clock in the afternoon during a particularly hellish workday, I went outside into my backyard to get some air and listen to the bird sounds around me as I tried to calm down. That was when I heard the hammering. 

I looked around but there were no workmen at any of the neighboring houses, for once. So I followed the sound and looked at the nearby trees. That is when I saw the pileated woodpecker.

Backyard pileated woodpecker
(Margo D. Beller)

Back in early December I mentioned seeing this type of woodpecker - the largest of the woodpeckers in my part of the world - battering a dead tree in search of carpenter ants, its favorite food. I stood and watched until it flew off. Now, here was another one digging into what I took to be a live tree in the corner of my neighbor's yard, abutting a corner of mine.

My first thought was, uh oh, that tree will be gone in two years or less. If a pileated comes knocking it usually means the tree is infested with the ants and will soon die. The tree looked healthy, but then again so did the ash tree I had to cut down once all the little holes created by emerald ash borers were pointed out to me. This particular tree is not on my property so there is no reason for me to look closely at it. But the pileated obviously saw or smelled something that made it want to stop.

But it wasn't alone.

For as I was looking at the pileated with my binoculars and saw the red "moustache" that told me it was a male, I discovered that above it and picking at a smaller branch was a second, female pileated. Now I started to wonder, could the male be building a nest? I've had plenty of nests within sight of, or on, my property but not a woodpecker nest hole. 

The holes left behind
(Margo D. Beller)

According to Cornell's "All About Birds" information on the pileated: 

The male begins excavating the nest cavity and does most of the work, but the female contributes, particularly as the hole nears completion. The entrance hole is oblong rather than the circular shape of most woodpecker holes. For the finishing touches, the bird climbs all the way into the hole and chips away at it from the inside. Periodically the adult picks up several chips at a time in its bill and tosses them from the cavity entrance. Pileated Woodpeckers don’t line their nests with any material except for leftover wood chips. The nest construction usually takes 3-6 weeks, and nests are rarely reused in later years. Cavity depth can range from 10-24 inches.

So I had to wonder what was going on. Was the male building a nest or just hungry?

I went for my camera. By the time I returned the female had left but the male was still hammering away. I took some photos. Then I had to go back to work.

When I looked out an upstairs window about 90 minutes later, it was still hammering. But by the time I got downstairs and outside it was gone. My husband had been watching the bird but, he said, a squirrel had spooked it off. In fact, the squirrel was on the next branch. That's when I saw there were two holes, the original one and one above it, slightly smaller because the woodpecker didn't get as far into it before it was spooked off. 

The squirrel on the nearby branch
(Margo D. Beller)

So it was only looking for food, not making a nest. I checked the tree for the next few days before finally acknowledging it wasn't going to nest in my yard. The Cornell people confirmed that for me with a chart showing pileateds nest between mid-May and mid-July in most of its range, not mid-February. (Its range is almost like an upside-down U, mainly the eastern continental U.S. going up into southern Canada and down into the Pacific northwest.)

Now I can watch that tree and see how long before it comes down, and which way it will fall - away from my yard, I hope. In the meantime, maybe some of the smaller yard birds can use one or both holes as a winter roost.