My friend and I took a late-season hike last weekend, and we were surprised at the number of migrating birds we saw and heard. At one point a woodpecker was calling and I immediately assumed it was one of these—Northern Flicker:
But the number one rule of birding is that you never make assumptions about what you think you’re seeing or hearing. That’s how you miss the rare, unusual or new-to-you birds.
“Bird the bird.”
Thankfully my friend whipped out her Merlin app because when she started the recording, it said “Pileated Woodpecker”, not Northern Flicker. I got very excited. I’ve only seen a Pileated Woodpecker twice before in my entire life. They are huge! Fifteen to nineteen inches long with a wingspan of up to thirty inches.
I started my own Merlin recording the next time he called and I got the same result.
I veered us off our regular path which leads to an open field, and instead we walked into the woods to see if we could find this giant bird. Of course that’s when he stopped calling. We waited awhile and listened, but there was only the call of a Blue Jay. After about 5 minutes we gave up and turned around to go back to our regular path. That’s when my friend spotted him fly over and land on a nearby tree. I was a little rusty with the binoculars, but eventually I found him pecking on a trunk about 50 feet away.
I obviously couldn’t get any photos from that distance, but this is what they look like up close. Look at those big feet!
Imagine a woodpecker so large it can make an excavation big enough for a duck to nest in. This is what the Cornell Lab of Ornithology says about Pileated Woodpeckers:
“The Pileated Woodpecker is one of the biggest, most striking forest birds on the continent. It’s nearly the size of a crow, black with bold white stripes down the neck and a flaming-red crest. Look (and listen) for Pileated Woodpeckers whacking at dead trees and fallen logs in search of their main prey, carpenter ants, leaving unique rectangular holes in the wood. The nest holes these birds make offer crucial shelter to many species including swifts, owls, ducks, bats, and pine martens.”
The bird eventually moved on, but later on it flew over us again and we could hear it calling from the other side of the woods.
I’m so thankful that my friend didn’t let me assume it was a flicker so we could enjoy a rare sighting of this amazing woodpecker!