Pileated Woodpecker

Like my last post on Lewis's woodpecker, I owe my first view of a pileated woodpecker to my son Sam. He is an arborist and has been working with trees for years. Relatively recently he got interested in woodpeckers because of their close association with trees. He took a job in the Santa Cruz, California area and we visited him in March 2025. He was very interested in trying to find a pileated woodpecker, which I'd never heard of before, and we visited Portola Redwoods State Park during our visit and part of our conversation that day was about the desire to see a pileated woodpecker, which we did not see. In September, Sam texted me that he'd seen several pileated woodpeckers at the Bear Yuba Land Trust Woodpecker Reserve in Nevada City, California, northeast of Sacramento. I immediately made plans to drive to Nevada City with the goal of seeing and photographing a pileated woodpecker. 

To get to the Woodpecker Reserve, you take the Cascade Canal Trailhead off Gracie Road about 700' downhill from the intersection of Gracie Road and Banner Lava Cap Road. You follow a spur trail up, then turn left at the top of the hill along the Cascade Canal for .75 mile east on the Banner-Cascade trail. Then turn left on to the Orene Wetherall Trail. The Woodpecker Preserve is a 28 acre parcel of land. The trail is circular and about .6 of a mile one way. While there I took the Cascade Canal access three times  (1.5 miles round trip each) and walked the Orene Wetherall Trail four times (1.2 miles round trip each). After my third trip around the Orene Wetherall Trail I was very disappointed. Sam had seen three pileated woodpeckers there his first time on the trail. I was in Auburn, doing some birding there, and thinking of heading home. It was afternoon, not an ideal time for birding, but I decided I'd traveled all that way (over 500 miles) and should give it one more shot. So I drove over 25 miles back to Nevada City and did one more trip along the Cascade Canal Trail and then the Orene Wetherall Trail. To my great surprise and delight a female pileated woodpecker flew over my head and landed on the side of a tree not too far distant from me. I had time to take one photo before it flew and got one poor photo of it in flight. I was elated. 

The white wing feathers are visible in flight. 

Illustration of a female from Birds of the World. 

Illustration of a male from Birds of the World. 

The pileated woodpecker is black with a red crest. A white line extends from the bill across the cheek and down the neck. In males, the line from the bill to the throat is red. It is the largest woodpecker in North America. Because of their large size and chisel-shaped bill, it is great at excavating cavities in trees that are used by many birds and animals for shelter and nesting, such as for boreal owls, wood ducks and the American marten. They also accelerate wood decomposition and nutrient recycling by breaking apart snags and logs. Their diet consists primarily of wood-dwelling ants, especially carpenter ants, and wood-boring beetle larvae. 

Plate 111 from Audubon's Birds of America showing the pileated woodpecker, from Wikipedia. 

Range map from Birds of the World.