pictures of Dryocopus Pileatus
 

I was sitting at the kitchen table over the weekend when I heard this loud tapping outside, so I went out to investigate. Up in my neighbors tree about 40 ft away I saw a large Pileated Woodpecker. This is the largest member of this family of birds and you don't see too many these days due to dwindling hapitat. They mostly feed on bugs in rotted tree limbs and I guess with an ever growing and expanding human population and a compulsion to prune dead wood from our trees they are mostly deep in forests now. Thier cousin, the Ivory Billed Woodpecker is the one thought to be extinct that made headlines a few years ago in Arkansas when someone thought they saw one.

Anyway, I ran inside and grabbed my camera with a 70-200 lens and my Bushhawk support and got off a few images before he moved on. I am posting 3 because they show that in about 10 minutes he went from picking at a rotten spot on an oak limb to all out carving it out. Keep in mind that this bird stands about 10 inches tall, like a big crow and by the time he quit on that tree the whole is about as big as he is. When he started hitting hard wood the sound was really loud!

I wonder if my grandchildren will be able to see things like this someday or if they will be gone. When I was a kid growing up in Georgia we saw them much more.

Yea, we have a number of different kinds that live next to our house. I see them on my feeders. Beautiful birds.

They are really spectacular when they fly through the woods. I wonder how they are doing nationally? We see a fair number of them in this part of PA but I don't know if there are more or fewer than years ago.

One of them was eating holes in my t-111 siding before I chased him off.

One of these big guys?

Naw a smaller version. Still, it's unnerving to be woken up by one of these pecking apart your very residence, 10 feet away from your bed.

Did you check under your siding for tasty bugs?

Yeah, tiny bees build nests in the nail holes. Never get t-111.

If you've got moisture traveling from the inside to the outside of your house I don't know if it would much matter what kind of siding you have unless it was completely rot proof and breathable. Still you'd continue to develop other issues with moisture in your walls.

Wow - lovely sharp pictures.
And thanks for the measurements - opened my eyes as to how BIG these guys are. Our native woodpeckers are dwarfed by comparison.

birdy pictures...i love birdy pics

What a wonderful opportunity, I haven't seen one of these for years and never with that kind of chance to take photos,

They did a number on my mother's house. The only way to stop them was to change the house color from brown to blue.

Dunno what kind we've got, but the Emerald Ash Borer really brings 'em for a buffet. It can get really loud here; the woods are filled with the sound of 10,000 tiny jackhammers.

Interesting. My mother painted the inside of her patio roof blue so the birds would stop nesting in the eaves, but I didn't realize it would work for the whole exterior of the house too.