Pileated Nest Part Two

Check out the swirling feathers of the female pileated woodepcker's crest!.

On the afternoon of May 15 I went back out to check on the progress of the pileated woodpecker nest I'd discovered in our orchard. Both birds of the mated pair had been sharing excavation duties and I wanted to see if they were still at work, or if egg laying had begun.

Soon after I entered the blind, the female flew in to the tree with the nest cavity. Without a sidewards glance, she entered the hole and started bringing out chips and dust from the bottom of the cavity. I noticed that I heard no loud hammering when she was in the cavity. A day earlier, I'd watched the male at the site and when he was inside, the hammering was loud and he emerged with chips rather than dust.

When the female reached to the bottom of the cavity to scoop up chips and dust, just the tip of her tail was visible.

On this day the female was coming up with mostly dust and dumping it out of the cavity. As she reached headfirst into the bottom of the cavity, I could see just the tip of her tail. This allowed me to estimate the inside depth of the cavity at easily 12 inches. Adult pileateds are between 16 and 19 inches in length from bill tip to tail end. They had excavated this cavity in less than two weeks.

I heard a loud drum from the deep woods to the southwest of the blind, followed by a pileated's contact call. Moments later the female exited the nest and flew off in the direction of the call.

The male came back next and continued his excavation. He chiseled for a while then brought several bill-fulls of chip up to the hole and let the breeze blow them from his open bill.


At one point he stopped to rest and seemed to notice my spotting scope sticking out of the blind's peephole. He stopped and stared. Turning his head left and right, he look the scene over very carefully.

The male was quite wary while in the nest.

He seemed to relax after a few minutes (and so did I) but he did not resume working. Instead, perhaps due to the heat of the afternoon, he began to pant with his bill open.

When the breeze would rise in force, the male would raise his bill—was he letting cool air flow across his throat and chest? I'll never know, but this seemed plausible.

He might have just been looking around, or he might have been trying to cool off in the breeze.

He closed his eyes and took a few short naps, so I knew he was unconcerned with my presence. This made me happy because I was looking forward to watching the entire nesting cycle—if these birds were lucky enough to nurture a brood from hatching to fledging. The huge, yellow poplar they'd chosen as a nest site was broken off on top and it was missing some of its bark, but there was no real impediment to prevent a hungry raccoon from climbing up to the cavity and making a meal of the eggs.

Male pileated woodpecker catching a few winks.

I'll revisit the pileated nest in some future posts. But right now I've got to go scouting for a Big Day field trip I'm leading tomorrow.

Finding a Pileated Woodpecker Nest

Let's take a short break from our Guyana adventure and enjoy a bird species that's closer to home—at least for those of us in North America.

Two weeks ago I was walking in the old orchard on our farm and I heard the tell-tale sounds of a woodpecker excavating a nest cavity. I followed the sound until I was reasonably sure I knew which large, dead tree was going to be the nest site. However, the tree (a dead yellow poplar trunk) had at least a dozen large holes in it, several of which looked relatively new.

Two days later Julie and I heard the wood-chopping sound while checking the bluebird boxes in the orchard. She immediately thought "pileated" but I wasn't so sure since we have four other woodpecker species that nest on our place. We walked to the trunk and suddenly the head of a male pileated woodpecker poked out of one of the larger holes on the southwest side of the trunk. Not wanting to spook the bird from his work, we slowly backed away and left him in peace.

The following day I went out to scope the site from a distance, but before I could even set up, the male and his mate began drumming and calling to one another. The male swooped into the nest tree, glared at me for a minute, then swooped off into the woods. Now I was really paranoid that I was going to frighten the pileateds into abandoning the nest, which I assumed was still being excavated.

Later that afternoon I went out and listened for the tapping. I heard none and could see no activity in or around the nest hole. This was my chance. I ran back to the garage and grabbed my portable photo blind. Back out to the orchard I ran. I had the thing set up in three minutes. Unzipping the peephole facing the nest I saw that my activity had not gone undetected. The male was there in the nest glaring at me. Very calmly I stepped back out of the blind, zipped it closed and strolled away nonchalantly. The male resumed his excavation a few minutes later, the impacts of his bill sounding like someone using a hatched to split kindling.

I knew I wanted to digiscope the scene but not at the expense of disturbing the birds. Clearly there was no way to get in and out of the blind unnoticed. I decided to try anyway. I went back at 3:00 pm, knowing I had a bit more than an our before I'd have to go pick the kids up at the school bus stop. I carried my Leica digiscoping rig out to the blind and slipped inside. The sound of my footfalls, or perhaps the zippers on the blind, were enough to alert the nest occupant to my presence. When I opened the blind's peephole, there was the female looking out the hole directly at me.

I set up the scope, got good focus, dropped the Leica D-Lux 4 camera and adapter over the eyepiece and shot a dozen frames. The female resumed her work, bringing bill-fulls of chips and sawdust to the opening and dumping them out.

The female pileated (note her black moustache) glaring at me.

Then I flipped it over to video and got this:

I am completely over the moon about this nest and the opportunity to observe it over the next month or so, assuming all goes well with the excavation work, the egg laying, the incubation—you get the picture. And I hope I do, too!