Pennsylvania Game News - June 2016 - 48

elm snag nest hole in Margaret's Woods.
I was astounded and did some quick
calculations based on pileated-woodpecker research.
Pileated nestlings are known to perch
at nest holes when they are 20 to 23 days
old, meaning they might have hatched
around May 18.
Incubation by both parents takes between 14 and 18 days.
Most likely, the male was incubating
the eggs when we'd seen him sitting in
the nest hole. Ornithologists also estimate
that it takes 23 days to excavate the nest,
which meant the whole process had begun
around April 9.
Lawrence Kilham, who spent many
days watching pileateds, wrote, "Each
nest watched was different and many
nests, located in quiet woodland, were
remarkably free from interference."
Kilham also noted pileateds "prefer to
nest in stubs that are free of old holes,"
which can shelter black snakes, gray
squirrels, or screech owls - known predators of eggs and young.
Margaret's Woods was a reasonably
quiet woodland, but the elm snag did have
those two other holes, proving Kilham's
point that each nest is different and that
pileateds are opportunists.
Unlike their close relatives, ivory-billed
woodpeckers, which require southeastern
bottomland forests far from humans, the
crow-sized pileateds have adjusted to
a wide variety of habitats, and thrive in
coniferous, deciduous and mixed forests.
Late in the afternoon of June 7, I
slipped over to the pileated tree and saw
a head repeatedly poking out of the nest
hole.
This time, it was a female pileated
nestling awaiting the return of her parents.
Both parents feed their young by regurgitation, inserting their bills into the
48

throats of their offspring, which suck and
jerk their heads as many as four times at
once.
I also could hear the "churring" noise
the nestlings make when they are hungry.
Because of stormy weather, I wasn't
able to return to the nest site until three
days later.
I sat on the old log, now partially
screened from the nestlings by striped
maple and catalpa leaves. At 9:35 a.m.,
the heads of two youngsters were out of
the cavity and repeatedly making rasping noises. The adults cuk, cukked and
drummed in the distance.
By 10, the nestlings were halfway out
of the cavity, rasping loudly when they
heard a parent close by. Finally, the female
pileated landed on the side of the nest tree
and poked her long bill down each of their
throats three times before flying away.
The nestlings kept up their begging,
and I was able to distinguish the female
nestling from the male. She had a crest
that wasn't as large as the male's and she
lacked the male's dark red line on the side
of his jaw.
Both were a bit fuzzy looking, their
crests developed but not as prominent as
their parents' crests.
Nine minutes later, an adult called
nearby and was answered by another
farther away.
Then, the adult male landed nearby on
a dead tree close to the ground, in search
of carpenter ants and beetle larvae. From
there, he flew to another leaning dead tree
and kept up a chuckling call as he worked
around the area.
The female was close by, answering
the male, while the young never stopped
their begging calls - their heads and half
their bodies out of the nest hole.
The male flew up and fed only once
before flying over to the other side of the
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Pennsylvania Game News - June 2016
