Pileated Woodpecker

Yes. Pileated woodpeckers occupy mature forests throughout North Louisiana's 26 parishes, and their presence in a stand of timber confirms what no amount of visual inspection can determine as quickly: the forest is old enough, large enough, and structurally complex enough to support a species that requires big trees, dead wood, and extensive territory. Tanner's 1942 study of North Louisiana's virgin timber documented 3 to 6 pileated pairs per 1,580 hectares of uncut forest — a density that dropped below 1 pair per 1,580 hectares in second-growth timber.

A pileated crossing a logging road or a bayou corridor creates a visual impression that stops even experienced birders who have seen the species hundreds of times, because a black bird the size of a crow with a red crest and white wing patches looks like nothing else in North Louisiana's skies.

Pileated woodpeckers measure 16 to 19 inches in length with a wingspan of 26 to 30 inches — the size of a small crow, and the largest woodpecker most North Americans will ever see. Body plumage runs mostly black with bold white stripes extending from the face down the sides of the neck. The underwings flash bright white in flight, creating a conspicuous pattern visible at considerable distance. The crest — the defining feature — stands as a pointed, brilliant red triangle atop the head that gives the bird a prehistoric, almost pterodactyl-like silhouette in flight. Males carry a red mustache stripe extending from the base of the bill, while females show a black mustache stripe in the same position — the most reliable field mark for sexing the species. Both sexes carry the full red crest, though the female's crest has a black forehead patch that the male's lacks. The bill is long, chisel-shaped, and dark gray — a precision excavation tool that delivers blows powerful enough to penetrate solid hardwood and extract carpenter ant galleries from deep within dead trees. In flight, pileated woodpeckers follow the undulating pattern characteristic of all woodpeckers — a few rapid wingbeats followed by a brief closed-wing glide that produces a roller-coaster flight path — but the pileated's large size and white underwing flashes make the flight pattern visible from much farther away than any other woodpecker in the region. A pileated crossing a logging road or a bayou corridor creates a visual impression that stops even experienced birders who have seen the species hundreds of times, because a black bird the size of a crow with a red crest and white wing patches looks like nothing else in North Louisiana's skies.

What They Eat

Carpenter ants constitute up to 60 percent of the pileated woodpecker's diet — a specialization so pronounced that the bird's entire foraging strategy, bill morphology, and excavation behavior have evolved around extracting these particular insects from deep within dead wood. Carpenter ants (Camponotus species) excavate extensive galleries in dead and dying trees, creating networks of tunnels and chambers that the pileated woodpecker accesses by chiseling rectangular holes into the wood.

The holes are distinctive: rectangular rather than circular, sometimes a foot long and several inches wide, carved deep enough into the heartwood to expose the ant galleries within. A dead tree worked by a pileated woodpecker looks like someone attacked it with a chisel and mallet — which is essentially what happened, except the chisel is a bill and the mallet is a skull reinforced with shock-absorbing bone structure.

Beyond carpenter ants, the diet includes termites, wood-boring beetle larvae, and other insects extracted from dead wood, plus wild fruits, berries, and nuts that supplement the insect diet during fall and winter. Berries of dogwood, poison ivy, holly, and other native shrubs appear in the diet seasonally, and pileated woodpeckers occasionally visit suet feeders at rural homes — a feeding behavior that startles homeowners accustomed to downy woodpeckers and red-bellied woodpeckers at the feeder and not expecting a crow-sized bird to arrive and dominate the suet cage.

Foraging occurs at all heights in the forest, from the bases of snags and fallen logs on the forest floor to high branches of dead and dying trees in the canopy. Pileated woodpeckers spend significant time foraging low on large stumps and fallen logs, tearing apart decayed wood to access carpenter ant colonies concentrated near ground level — a behavior that surprises people who expect to see woodpeckers only high on tree trunks.

A pileated working a large fallen log on the forest floor tears chunks of wood away with powerful bill strikes, sends debris flying in arcs, and the excavation can reduce a section of log to scattered chips within a single feeding session. The foraging intensity leaves evidence that persists for years: a dead tree or log worked by a pileated woodpecker shows deep rectangular excavations, piles of fresh wood chips at the base, and stripped bark that exposes the pale interior wood in patterns that trail-walkers notice and sometimes mistake for damage from a small animal or a human tool.

The long, barbed tongue — which extends several inches beyond the bill tip and wraps around the back of the skull when retracted — allows the pileated woodpecker to extract ants and larvae from deep within galleries that the bill cannot reach directly. After the bill opens the wood and exposes the gallery system, the tongue probes into tunnels, collects ants on its barbed, sticky surface, and retracts them into the mouth.

A pileated woodpecker feeding at an active carpenter ant gallery makes rapid, rhythmic tongue strikes into the opened wood — a feeding technique invisible from the outside but audible as a faint, rapid tapping distinct from the heavy bill strikes that opened the excavation.

No. This species is not dangerous to people when it is observed without handling or disturbance