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Bird of the month
Big
bird of the Ozarks: Pileated woodpecker
By
R.D. Hohenfeldt
My
parents, Harold and Georgia Hohenfeldt, live in Kliever, a village in
Moniteau
County
in the extreme northern fringe of the Ozarks region. Their home sits
atop a ridge and let me tell you, the front porch is great for sitting
and drinking sweet tea and looking out over the valley and the next
ridge. Every now and again a car or pick-up will drive by and kick up a
cloud of dust, but thankfully that doesn’t happen often. Mostly it’s
just peaceful.
Most
of the hillsides around them have been cleared and are used for grazing
cattle. Steep as the hills are, it’s a wonder the cattle haven’t
evolved with short legs on one side. Don’t misunderstand me; there are
plenty of trees and other brush around, but there isn’t really a thick
forest.
That’s
why it was a surprise when they spotted a Dryocopus pileatus, a Pileated
Woodpecker, on a deteriorating old stump in the front yard.
“They’re
usually found in mature forests,” my mother, a birdwatcher, says. “I
don’t know if he was just passing through, or what.”
The
bird was in their front yard on May 3, 2006, according to my mother’s record
in her bird book.
I
did a search on the pileated woodpecker and found that the bird is
typically about 15 inches long, about the size of a crow. It has a
prominent red crest at the rear of the head and a white throat. Most of
the body is black. The male has a red forehead and red area on the side
of the head; the female’s forehead is black and there’s a black
stripe on the side of the head. The bird in the photo my father took
looks to me to be a male.
The
bird lives in much of
Canada
and in most areas of the eastern
United States
, including
Missouri
,
Arkansas
and
Louisiana
, according to one source I found. I don’t like to think of
Missouri
as “eastern” but that’s what the experts say.
The
Pileated Woodpecker likes to eat carpenter ants and beetles. No telling
what it found in that old stump.
One
source I found said a Pileated Woodpecker pair stays together on its
territory year-round and will only tolerate another pair coming into
that territory during the winter. Otherwise, the pair will defend its
territory and run the other couple out.
No
wonder you don’t see many of these birds around. They’re
anti-social.
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