Pileated

The pileated woodpecker is the largest woodpecker in North America, about the size of a common crow, exceeded in size only by the now extinct ivory-billed woodpecker. The pileated feeds on the carpenter ants that live in galleries in trees, alive or dead, as well as wood-boring insects. 

Pileated woodpeckers also feed on various fruits and berries – once I watched a pileated feeding on poison ivy fruit that dangled on the ends of vines extending several feet from the tree trunk on which the vine grew. The bird repeatedly flew out from an adjacent tree to, in mid-air, snatch berries from the vines and then fly back to the tree from which it had taken off. Oh for a video camera that day!

A recent post on an Internet forum highlighted how little many people know about these magnificent birds. The author of that post indicated he was tempted to kill a pileated woodpecker that was “damaging” his trees –

Pileated woodpeckers feed on insects from ground level to high in the largest trees and will also excavate insects from fallen trees and decaying logs –

The trees in which pileated woodpeckers chisel holes already have major troubles. Those trees are often riddled with carpenter ant galleries and are, therefore, structurally compromised –

Other trees have beetle larvae either beneath the bark or in the wood of the tree –

Pileated woodpeckers extract insects from the insects' galleries with their long tongues –

Large excavated cavities in dead trees, or in decayed branches of live trees, serve as sites for the woodpeckers to raise their young and are subsequently used by wood ducks, barred owls, and a host of other birds and mammals –

The writer of that forum post made an incorrect assumption, he didn’t realize that pileated woodpeckers only “damage” trees that are already damaged.