God's Mortising Machine

On Sunday, I came across this tree on top of a stream bank that the dogs were exploring. The deep mortising you see here is not the work of an over-caffeinated bed-post maker, but the fresh work of a pileated woodpecker.

The pileated woodpecker is about the size of a crow, and is the largest woodpecker in North America, and quite common across the Eastern U.S. The very loud drumming of a pileated woodpecker is used to establish a territory and attract a mate -- an important activity in April or May. The woodpecker and his mate will stay in the same area all year long, holding a territory much like a fox will.

The pileated woodpecker looks quite a bit like an Ivory Billed woodpecker, though these slightly larger woodpeckers have almost certainly been extinct for more than 50 years, despite the fact that a small remnant population was reported to have been found in Arkansas about 18 months ago. There is now considerable reason to believe the Arkansas reports were either mistaken sightings of a pileated woodpecker (the video tape is inconclusive) or an intentional fabrication.

"Pileated," by the way, is just a fancy word for "capped" and refers to the bird's bright red crest.

For the record, the mortises in the first picture were large enough for my entire fist to disappear inside them, but they were too low to the ground to be prospective nesting holes. They are simply the product of a hungry bird drilling for a few beetle grubs.

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