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.

Backyard Bird Census

Every year, the Cornell Ornithology Lab in New York and the national Audubon Society hold a Great Backyard Bird Count during the Presidents Day weekend. As the name implies, the idea is to encourage people to go outside or watch bird feeders and count how many of which types of birds show up.

White-throated sparrow (Margo D. Beller)

It is a chance for non-scientific types such as me to collect data that help the real scientists track movements of birds around the world and see which types of birds are on the increase and which are declining.

For me, it is a chance to do a census of which birds are in or calling near my house.

I am not a counter most of the time. It is enough to put "titmouse" in my notes rather than "3 titmice seen between 9 am and 9:15am." But I try to do this for the count at least one day during the four (Friday through Monday) days it's held.

I've already learned a few interesting things:

So far I've seen a marked decrease in the number of house sparrows. This could be for any number of reasons. It could be they are going to other feeders where people are using cheap millet seed these sparrows can more easily eat rather than the sunflower seeds I use, which they would have to crack open. It could be because there is a large number of house finches in the yard (I saw as many as nine at one time, all over both feeders). With all that competition there could be less incentive for the sparrows to hang around. (Although they will nest in anything including street lamps and under a window air conditioner. I know of one large sparrow flock using a row of forsythia on one street I walk on my way to the post office.)

Jay (Margo D. Beller)

I have seen no more than one or two blue jays at a time. There was a point a few weeks ago when there were as many as six taking turns hitting the house feeder, making it swing violently as they took off. Jays, like other birds, have a pecking order and if a jay comes out of turn it is swiftly forced off by another. Were those other jays just passing through?

I have seen or heard no Carolina wrens from my yard lately. These little brown and gold-fronted birds are the only wrens that will hang around my part of the country during winter - as long as they can find food. I know in past counts I've found at least one. There was one I heard during a hike and one calling quite some distance from my house one morning a few weeks ago. I am hoping the recent polar vortex didn't affect the wren population.

I have seen no juncos in the yard lately. That is another bird that will be out of the yard for weeks but then suddenly shows up in small numbers. However, the number of white-throated sparrows has remained fairly steady. Usually there is at least one I see or hear. Yesterday there were five, most of them checking for dropped seed bits under the feeder. When winter starts they tend to stay in the bushes but as the cold wears on they become a lot less shy. For instance, there is one that has made it his business to fly into the house feeder and eat there. It will not leave for the house finches and reluctantly leaves for the bigger cardinals and jays. As the winter goes on the male's white throat and the white "eyebrows" and yellow near the eyes will get so bright they can be easily seen in the dusk. This is the white-throat's breeding colors. Although white-throats have been known to remain in the New York metro area (in such places as Central Park, for instance), most will fly off to their northern breeding territories as spring approaches.

Red-headed woodpecker, North Carolina
(RE Berg-Andersson)

There is always a chance something unusual will be around to count. One year during the count, walking along a part of Patriots Path, I encountered a redheaded woodpecker, a southern bird that has been slowly moving north in its range as climate change makes the world warmer. For the redheaded, the challenge is finding the dead trees it needs for roosting. When I found it, it was noisily flying around one that was surrounded by water, just like its usual swamp (caused by the nearby Whippany River flooding). At the time, the sighting was unusual enough for my report to be questioned by the scientists, but I convinced them of my accuracy. Now, however, these birds have been found more often in New Jersey, with a confirmed nest in the dead trees of Troy Meadows.

I doubt one will show up in my yard this year but, given the increasing warmth of the world and destruction of its usual habitat through so-called development, next year is always a possibility.

Avoiding Pepe Le Pew

According to the 2019 edition of The Old Farmer's Almanac (and it is old, first published in 1792), on Feb. 24 "Skunks mate now."

Never have three little words been so obnoxious.

This means for the last week of this month my windows will continue to be kept tightly shut because there will be a very good chance of stink during the night, either between two male skunks fighting over a female, or a female skunk trying to fight off a male.

The real Pepe le Pew (free photo courtesy of Pixabay/Wikipedia)

Skunks can stink up the area at all times of year, of course. That's how they defend themselves from predators. They use two anal glands that can shoot the noxious spray up to 12 feet away. I can remember being awakened one autumn pre-dawn by the howl of a cat followed by the familiar, pungent odor of a skunk. The cat's eyes would've been stung and the skunk would've skittered off on its short legs.

The common striped skunk, made famous by the Warner Brothers cartoon character Pepe Le Pew, is the one you’ll find in New Jersey although there are 11 species, nine of them in North America. Like the house cat Pepe frequently mistook for a potential mate, I do my best to avoid skunks.

Sometimes it isn't so easy. In the dark, skunks are very hard to see. When I used to walk the streets of my town in the dark pre-dawn hours to get the train to work, skunks would cross the road ahead of me or, in one memorable case, two baby skunks turned out to be on a lawn next to me as I sensed something nearby in the dark. I walked very slowly away so as not to scare them into spraying. If you don't threaten it, a skunk continues on its way.

Skunks are solitary creatures except during the winter, when several may den together, and in the breeding season that runs roughly from mid-February into March. This is also when you’ll see - or smell - the most road-killed skunks as these nocturnal critters cross roads to find a mate and will treat your fast-approaching car as one big predator to spray.

You might wonder, what is a skunk good for in the greater ecological scheme of things? Skunks will eat the insects that otherwise destroy your plants and lawn or nest in your house: grasshoppers, crickets, beetles and wasps. They love grubs, so if you see deep holes in your lawn you can thank your local skunk. However, skunks, like raccoon and bear, will also eat pet food and garbage left outside.

(free photo courtesy of Pixabay)

That’s why skunks are becoming as common a N.J. sight as gray squirrels, and for the same reason: A well-fed skunk is a breeding skunk. After mating the young are born about two months later, with five to six, on average, to a litter. They will nurse in the den for about a month and a half.

If you presume a skunk has bred in February, the young are active by May, which is just in time for a parent great horned owl that bred in January and hatched its own young to start picking skunks off to feed them. Great horned owls are not put off by skunk smell because they can’t smell the spray.

When owl meets skunk only the smell remains in the morning.

The Birds in Winter

It is fortuitous that at the same time when the polar vortex is once again upon us, leaving us with temperatures in the teens (F) despite abundant sunshine, I am reading a book about feeding birds and how this activity went from only in winter to all year. I learned of "The Birds at My Table: Why We Feed Wild Birds and Why It Matters" by Darryl Jones thanks to Cornell's Lab of Ornithology, which also recently published a pdf on "Winter Bird Feeding."

Winter feeder (Margo D. Beller)

I have written much over the years in this blog on birds, feeding them and the harshness of winter (type "seed" into the search box in the upper left corner and you'll see them). As the pdf puts it, "If you feed birds, you’re in good company. Birding is one of North America’s favorite pastimes. A 2011 report from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimates that more than 50 million Americans provide food for wild birds."

The report then goes on to remind us all of the importance of helping the birds, what kinds of feeders help which birds the most, feeder placement and the best types of seed and suet to provide, among other considerations. Jones, meanwhile, tries to figure out why we feed wild birds and how the practice of feeding them in winter expanded to all year.

He writes: "The reality is that while wild bird feeding may be a massive enterprise with a global reach, the focus and interest of most individual feeders [the people, not the food implement] is on their own private garden. All those issues and worries may be of provound interest, but unless they affect us directly, they may seem a bit too vague or remote. On the other hand, most feeders are pleased to share their experiences or queries..." Facebook alone has many pages set up by birders in specific regions such as New Jersey and nationwide such as the American Birding Association's reports of rarities across the country.

Watnong Brook, thawing (Margo D. Beller)

But let's go back to bird feeding.

One of my friends puts out seed, suet and peanuts all year. She enjoys watching "her" birds from her bedroom during summer mornings when she is getting ready for work. She puts out liquid for hummingbirds every year, the feeder strategically placed near a pot of bee balm, a known hummer attractant. She used to feed squirrels, too, until they started hitting her bird feeders, including the hummingbird feeder.

I put out seed in fall, when the migrants are moving through, until early spring. In cold times I also put out suet. In midwinter I feel sure no bears will take down my feeders. Otherwise, I take all the feeders in at night. When I see the first reports of hummingbirds in New Jersey, usually after I am no longer putting out seed and suet, I put out sugar water for them. Except for the hummer feeder, which is on a shepherd's crook behind deer netting, the two feeder poles have baffles to keep the squirrels from climbing to the feeders.

My attitude is, when summer comes there are more than enough food sources for the birds and if I want to see them I can leave home for areas where they have been known to show up or have been reported. By late spring it is time to start working in the garden and I am tired of the continual feeding of birds I'd rather not see such as house sparrows. Hummers are another matter: They are hard to find in the wild unless in a garden with a lot of the blooming plants they frequent. Since deer have been known to eat these types of blooms, I don't grow them and provide sugar water instead.

Feeders in winter, before the birds started coming (Margo D. Beller)

Which way is "correct"? Both, depending on the person involved. Some people want to attract or help birds all the time, some want to help during dire conditions, such as the current polar vortex, and leave the birds to fend for themselves and their young during warmer periods. I've been feeding birds for over a decade and am not about to stop even if my feeders bring birds as well as those that feed on them. (Hawks have to eat, too, though I'd prefer it be elsewhere.)

One of the things Jones looks at is whether all this bird feeding is helping or hurting birds. His conclusion is "feeding almost always changes things," but not always in the way we expect. I see many more house finches than titmice nowadays. Cardinals and chickadees must come early to the feeders before the jays arrive and scare them off.

There's more than enough food for all in my yard, but I do wish more people in my neighborhood would join me in this relatively inexpensive bit of conservation that is easy to do and very important.

Feed the birds.

Cold Truths

Only a maniac would be outside on a day when the polar vortex is in town and the air temperature is 3 degrees F but the wind makes it feel like minus 17. We did not get the inches of snow predicted and the sun came out long enough to melt the slush but the bitter, killing cold and wind arrived, just as the weather people said it would.

I am not a maniac, at least not where cold is concerned. I could not even bring out the garbage, much less go looking for birds out in the field.

My favorite winter bird picture. Our snow is gone but the cold remains.
(Margo D. Beller)

Instead, I look out the window.

I have been leaving the feeders out for the past week, sure the bears would be finally hibernating. Today I am sure they are because that is what I feel like doing, too. I have fleece over my pajamas, top and bottom, ready to go back to bed at a moment's notice. First, I go to my sunny office, open the curtains for more warmth than what my hard-working furnace is providing and listen to Bach.

From there I hear cardinals outside, perhaps poking around the hedges behind the deer netting for what they can scare up. I have no doubt they have also been at the house feeder. When I looked out earlier I saw a titmouse fly in. It was all puffed up to keep warm air under its feathers the way you or I would put on many layers to keep our body heat trapped inside. When I put out seed it is the type that has a high fat content to provide energy and thus warmth. Suet has an even higher fat content because suet is rendered fat.

In the past I might've gone out.
Not today. (Margo D. Beller)

It is the coldest day I've experienced in years. It makes me anxious: Will the furnace keep working? Will I be warm enough? Why do I feel the deep need to go outside and get out of the house when I know being outside could literally mean death?

There's an advantage to being a "bird brain" and not having the capacity to worry over the whys and wherefores. You eat and find shelter from the wind and hungry predators or you die. It's as basic as that. When I watch the birds in the bitter cold I feel sorry. I think of homeless human beings and those who are forced by circumstance to have to go out on a day like this and work to make a living and I feel pity for them and anger at the weather, the government officials who can't or won't do the things necessary to make the world better, the state of our world itself. Mostly, I just feel frustrated.

I continue to listen to Bach to stay calm. I see the bare tree branches blowing around, glad we did not lose power so the furnace can keep going. I allow the sun rays to hit me in the eyes because the light and warmth make me feel better. Not even a turkey vulture is flying around now looking for its carrion meal. I think of the last time I fell outdoors, slow to get up. On a day like this that carrion could be me.

Another single-digit cold night is expected but tomorrow is predicted to be "warmer," in the upper 20s. It could be worse, I guess. For now, to use a phrase that has become all too prevalent in a mainly negative way, I shelter in place.