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Wonderful Pileated Woodpecker behavior

From:

Bryce Butler

Reply-To:

Bryce Butler

Date:

Sat, 14 May 2005 20:26:07 -0400

    Today at Oregon Ridge Park doing the May Count, I watched the most
amazing behavior and display of two Pileated Woodpeckers Išve ever seen. (I
used to have a pair and then the male accompanying two goofy kids visiting
my suet feeder outside of Seattle.) The two seemed clearly marked as males
with bright red moustaches. The two flew in on opposite sides of a tree
trunk then hopped down onto the lawn. Side by side and parallel they hopped
ponderously across the lawn. They took no note of me though I was perhaps
fifteen feet away. As they proceeded the one on my left seemed to bathe in
the dew on the grass by swishing about with its body from time to time.
Occasionally they probed the ground with their beaks. Then every four or
five hops they would strike a pose, facing one another each with its beak
stuck up in the air. I thought it was a territorial display but they stayed
together after flying up on some tree trunks, then circling about through
nearby woods and calling to one another. There was never any attempt by
either one to drive the other off. I watched mesmerized for fifteen or
twenty minutes despite the trees being full of bright attractive migrants.
Any explanations or hypotheses concerning what I saw would be welcome as
none of my books makes any mention of such behavior.
Bryce Butler