Hobbies And Interests
Feeding Stance
These woodpeckers have sharp, pointed claws on their large feet and short legs. These claws help them grasp bark to hang from trees while their spiky, short tail keeps them in a vertical position. This allows them to use their hearing and touch to sense the vibrations coming from the chewing and gnawing of wood-boring insects that constitute the major part of their diet.
Feeding Method
Woodpecker bills are long, sharp and pointed and used to bore holes in trees. The woodpecker's tongue is twice as long as the bill and very narrow, with sharp barbs on the end. By inserting their tongues into tree holes, the barbs spear the soft bodies of the larvae they feed on. They will pull bark off trees to get at the ants underneath as well.
Food
Wood-boring insects are their main diet. They eat carpenter ants and their larvae, tree-feeding beetles, as well as nuts and fruits. They bore characteristically large, squared-off holes in dead and dying trees, both standing and felled, to find food and create nests. As with most woodpeckers, pileated woodpeckers have also been known to frequent backyard feeders that provide suet.
Habitat
Pileated woodpeckers frequent areas of deciduous, coniferous or mixed forests of the middle and eastern U.S., as far south as the southern tip of Florida. They can be seen in northern Oregon, Washington state and farther north and east into parts of Canada. These prehistoric-looking birds don't migrate, instead remaining year-round residents. Trees they forage from and nest in must be large, so don't look for them in newly growing forests.