American Pileated Woodpecker Habitats: Black Body, Cavity Nest, White Egg

Summary: North American pileated woodpecker habitats in southern Canada and the eastern and west-coastal United States get black bodies, cavity nests and white eggs.

female (right) and male (left) pileated woodpeckers (Dryocopus pileatus); Sunday, May 25, 2008, 07:05: AndrewBrownsword, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons

North American pileated woodpecker habitats anticipate arborists, master gardeners, master naturalists and tree stewards in Picidae family wood pest-preyed distribution ranges in the eastern and Pacific coastal United States and southern Canada.

Pileated woodpeckers bear their common name from the crested tops of their heads and the scientific name Dryocopus pileatus (oak tree cutter [with] capped head tops). Ornithologists consider Carl Linnaeus's (May 23, 1707-Jan. 10, 1787) classification in 1758 as the nominate, southern pileatus subspecies from the Great Plains to the east coast. They designate the Dryocopus pileatus abieticola (oak-cutting, capped fir [tree] dweller) specimen, described in 1898 by Outram Bangs (Jan. 12, 1863-Sept. 22, 1932), the northern subspecies.

Nine-year lifespans expect coniferous, deciduous, mixed, old-growth or second-growth forests and woodlands and wooded parklands and swamps with close stands of dead wood and live trees.

May through July facilitate one three- to five-egg clutch in new east- or south-facing holes fitted each year into the same dead stub or live tree.

Parents-to-be gut 2.75- to 4.75-inch (6.98- to 12.06-centimeter) diameter entrances with 10- to 18-inch- (25.4- to 45.72-centimeter-) deep, 4- to 7-inch- (10.16- to 17.78-centimeter-) wide tunnels. Pole- or tree-housed, woodchip-lined nests at 15- to 70-foot (4.57- to 21.34-meter) heights harbor 1.18- to 1.38-inch (30- to 35-millimeter) by 0.94- to 1.02-inch (25-millimeter) eggs. Day-shift mothers-to-be and day- and night-shift fathers-to-be oftentimes initiate 15- to 18-day incubations before the China-white, glossy, smooth, sometimes pointed, subelliptical to elliptical clutch is complete.

Predatory American martens, barred owls, Cooper's hawks, gray foxes, great horned owls, hunters, northern goshawks, red-tailed hawks, squirrels and weasels jeopardize North American pileated woodpecker habitats.

Blind, helpless, naked hatchlings keep fed on regurgitated insects in the bills of both parents, the first 25 to 27 days after hatching inside cavity nests. They look around with opened eyes as nine- to 10-day-olds and fluffy with feathers outside sheaths as 10- to 16-days-olds before leaving as 26- to 28-day-olds. They maintain daily contact with both parents, through the end of summer, after moving away from cavity nests into nearby roosts and mature sexually as one-year-olds. Adults need blackberries, carpenter ants, caterpillars, cockroaches, elderberries, flies, grasshoppers, hackberries, nuts, persimmons, poison ivy berries, spruce budworms, suet, sumac berries, seeds and wood-boring beetle larvae.

North American pileated woodpecker habitats through 7,545.93 feet (2,300 meters) above sea level offer winter's coldest temperatures at minus 45 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 42.77 degrees Celsius).

Aspen, beech, blackberry, cypress, dogwood, Douglas-fir, elderberry, greenbrier, hackberry, hemlock, hickory, holly, larch, maple, oak, persimmon, pine, sassafrass, spruce and sumac promote pileated woodpecker life cycles. Brown eyes and flesh-colored legs, black foreheads and mustaches and red foreheads and scarlet mustaches qualify as respective hallmarks of juveniles, adult females and mature males. Black backs, feet and legs, black, long tails, gray upper, yellow lower semi-curved bills, large white-patched black wings and white chins reveal red-crested, yellow-eyed adult presences. Alternating deep-beat, folded-wing undulations on 25.98- to 29.53-inch (66- to 75-centimeter) wingspans suggest 16.75- to 19.29-inch (40- to 49-centimeter), 8.82- to 12.34-ounce (250- to 350-gram) adults.

North American pileated woodpecker habitats transmit high-pitched, loud yuck-yuck-yuck and yuka-yuka-yuka calls in all but one Canadian province and in the eastern and west-coastal United States.

Female (left) and male (right) pileated woodpeckers (Dryocopus pileatus) nest in Everglades National Park, southern Florida: USDA Forest Service - North Central Research Station, USDA Forest Service, Bugwood.org, CC BY 3.0 United States, via Forestry Images

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

female (right) and male (left) pileated woodpeckers (Dryocopus pileatus); Sunday, May 25, 2008, 07:05: AndrewBrownsword, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:PileatedWoodpeckerPair.jpg

Female (left) and male (right) pileated woodpeckers (Dryocopus pileatus) nest in Everglades National Park, southern Florida: USDA Forest Service - North Central Research Station, USDA Forest Service, Bugwood.org, CC BY 3.0 United States, via Forestry Images @ https://www.forestryimages.org/browse/detail.cfm?imgnum=1406207

For further information:

Baicich, Paul J.; and Harrison, Colin J.O. Nests, Eggs, and Nestlings of North American Birds. Second edition. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, Princeton Field Guides, 2005.

Bangs, Outram. April 1898. "Some New Races of Birds From Eastern North America: Ceophlœus pileatus abieticola, subsp. nov. Northern Pileated Woodpecker." The Auk, vol. XV (old series vol. XXIII), no. 2 (April-June): 176-177. New York NY: L.S. Foster.
Available via SORA (Searchable Ornithological Research Archive) @ https://sora.unm.edu/sites/default/files/journals/auk/v015n02/p0173-p0183.pdf

Grzimek's Animal Life Encyclopedia, 2nd edition. Volumes 8-11, Birds I-IV, edited by Michael Hutchins, Jerome A. Jackson, Walter J. Bock and Donna Olendorf. Farmington Hills MI: Gale Group, 2002.

Linnaeus, Carl. 1758. "3. Picus pileatus." Systema Naturae per Regna Tria Naturae, Secundum Classes, Ordines, Genera, Species, cum Characteribus, Differentiis, Synonymis, Locis, Tomus I, Editio Decima, Reformata: 113. Holmiae [Stockholm, Sweden]: Laurentii Salvii [Laurentius Salvius].
Available via Biodiversity Heritage Library @ http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/764490

Peterson, Alan P., M.D. "Dryocopus pileatus (Linnaeus) 1758." Zoonomen: Zoological Nomenclature Resource > Birds of the World -- Current Valid Scientific Avian Names > Piciformes > Picidae > Dryocopus.
Available @ http://www.zoonomen.net/avtax/pici.html