Pileated Woodpeckers 5 February 2012 / Copyright 2012 Robert D. Vickers, Jr.
Last Sunday, I was sitting at my writing desk window and watching the regular crowd of Juncos, Titmice, Chickadees, etc. at the birdfeeder. All of a sudden a pair of Pileated woodpeckers swooped down and landed on the branches of a Staghorn Summac at the edge of the woods just beyond the feeder. The limbs bent with their weight so that they hung with their backs down while they used their bills to apparently pull seeds from the reddish brown clusters on the summacs. They both showed the intense red crest with the female having the black forehead and the male having the red mustache. The male was also noticeably blacker than the female who showed a more drab color. I have never seen Pileated woodpeckers eating these seed clusters before. (Or, were they after insects in the clusters? It was hard to tell.) The picture was taken hurriedly through a window so it is not the best. The male is to the lower left.
