Pileated Woodpecker

New England forests have reclaimed bog and meadow over the past 100 years as the need for firewood and grass for grazing farm animals declined. Rapidly growing popular, birch, pine, and hemlock now crowd each other in vast stands, the original meadows detectable only by remnants of rusting fence wire and tumbled stone walls. The crowding of the trees as they reach for the sun weakens many, which then become homes for carpenter ants, which in turn attract a variety of woodpeckers.

Our biggest woodpecker, the Pileated, also known as the stump cock for its preference for ripping apart rotting stumps, hunts the ants, excavating whole sides of weakened trees to get at the colony. As big as a crow, the bird listens for ant activity and then quickly chisels into the colony, feasting on warrior, worker, and larval ants.

The contrast of wood chips against snow signals recent Pileated activity, and the fresh 8-inch oval hole provides a high window into the tunneled heart wood of this pine and its colony of ants, a woodpecker's pantry