January 27th, 2015

This morning, with the bird feeders empty following the weekend, I set off down to the forest to replenish the seed and suet supplies.  I heard the work of a nearby woodpecker and  felt a bit of a rush realizing it might be a pileated.  Peering up, and following the sound, I saw it was indeed this spectacular crow-sized bird.  In the photo below it is excavating new holes in search of food, in this case carpenter ants.

This is a somewhat rare and reclusive bird that is known to frequent the Blair property, but is not seen with any regularity.  My last winter sighting was recorded December 13 and 14, 2011.

Here are some photos of a female inspecting a potential nesting cavity outside the sugar shack at the Camp Heidelberg OEE Centre in March of 2010…

Follow this link for some information on the pileated woodpecker from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

I went back at the end of the day and took this video footage, hand-held with a point-and shoot camera, so it’s a bit rough, but there’s no mistaking that great red-crested head of “woody woodpecker.”

[youtube=http://youtu.be/CBGzWe9AtUY]