Pileated Woodpecker in the Visitor Center Parking Lot

A Pileated Woodpecker (Dryocopus pileatus) has been making frequent appearances around the Visitor Center Parking Lot, resulting in many close encounters for staff and visitors.

A true giant in the north, the pileated woodpecker is the largest extant woodpecker species in North America. This striking bird is commonly misidentified as the ivory-billed woodpecker, an even larger species that went extinct in the 1940s. Like most woodpecker species, pileated’s diets consist mainly of insects, including carpenter ants, beetles, termites, and their respective larvae. They forage for this bounty in the decaying wood of dead and/or felled trees, which may bring them closer to the ground than would be typically expected. 

Photo by Bill Moses, Hawk Mountain Sanctuary.