The Last Ha-ha-ha-ha-hah! Pileated Woodpeckers
by Marcia Wilson
Note: for the purpose of this piece, The Pileated Woodpecker is the largest known living woodpecker in North America. Bird lovers know the ivory-billed was the largest on the continent, but its status as a living organism is up for debate.
Something old, something new
The Pileated woodpecker Dryocopus pileatus thrives in a unique ecological niche: old growth forests, regardless of the exposure to humans. They can live just as well in remote wilderness as they can in areas of heavy human activity. Case in point: the outdoor lab of Clover Park Technical College. Look for mature, standing dead or dying trees with large rectangular patches of bark missing from the trunk, and you’ll see evidence of these woodpeckers. Outside of the West Coast, they have adapted to live among younger trees and larger areas with human interaction.
Pileateds are large enough that they may be mistaken for crows in flight, though undersides of their winds are brilliant white. Their bodies are heavy at 350 grams (the weight of a standard soup can) with broad, strong wings, and their length tops out at is 49 cms, or a little over 19 inches. Though similar in size, these woodpeckers don’t fly like crows. Crows also keep to a straight flight path whereas woodpeckers undulate. The word means “wavelike” and describes their long, slow way of flapping their wings with the final stroke pausing close to their bodies. To a casual observer, it looks as though the bird is flapping, then coasting, or imitating a stop-and-go engine that cycles part of the way through before pausing and starting up again. In short, they look like cartoon birds given life.
Cartoon valence
Mention woodpeckers, and most people envision Woody Woodpecker. The character looks almost like a pileated, but birdwatchers admit that trying to identify him by watching the films is an exercise in frustration. He was a mashup of the pileated Woodpecker and the Acorn Woodpecker, a rare visitor to Pierce County. Woody’s origin story goes that animator Walter Lantz needed a leaky roof as a plot device for a short film. The original storyboard designs, requiring many clock-hours of painting and drafting, were too expensive. Lantz’s solution was to create an animated woodpecker to drill the holes in the roof.
Woody Woodpecker’s almost instant popularity lead to his being the unofficial mascot of Universal Studios, not the least because he was created during the economic uncertainty of World War II. The little bird was unpredictable and raucous, but also brash and clever. He battled common human worries like warm shelter, rationing, and food insecurity. The enlisted soldiers liked his defiance and painted him on the noses of their aircraft and the walls of their mess halls. He remains a common subject in the pop art of carnivals, fairs, and street taggers.
All of this was a natural evolution from the historical attitude towards woodpeckers. The pileateds were originally placed in the Picus genus because of their feisty behavior and their red crowns. The Romans thought very highly of woodpeckers, associated with Mars, the god of War.
Audubon, like the scientists before him, admired the bird for its beauty but he was less than complimentary when it came to eating them. He claimed they tasted like the bugs they ate, adding, “It is then very difficult to kill it, and sometimes, when shot dead, it clings so firmly to the bark that it may remain hanging for hours” (Audubon 1831, 229).”
A crown of kings
A group of pileated Woodpeckers is called a Crown. This is a shout-out to their bright red heads, which classists compared to the red felt caps of antiquity. The adjective pileated is defined as, “having the feathers of the top of the head elongated and conspicuous,” 1728, from Latin pileatus “capped,” from pileus “conical felt cap without a brim,” which is perhaps from Greek pilos.
These phyrgian caps became an emblem of fighting against oppression and slavery. It is an interesting twist of history that a cap originating in Phyrgia, known for slavery in ancient times, became the emblem of those who fought to destroy oppression in all forms. It is no coincidence that paintings of the French Revolution show peasants wearing red caps. Woodpeckers can be admittedly foolish when they pick a fight; this has led to cultural parodies of protestors wearing red caps. Still, the emblem was respectable enough that “the red liberty cap” stands as a statement and a warning on the United States’ seal of the Senate.
A Keystone Species
Audubon’s annoyance at the pileated woodpeckers did not dilute his admiration. His painting of a family is a rare illumination into a bird’s life cycle and ecological niche. If modern artists painted the complete footprint of the Pileated, it would take up a city wall. The birds dig out new nesting burrows every year, and the old hollows are happily used by a plethora of birds, including sensitive species like wood ducks and owls. They eat termites, carpenter ants, and wood-boring insects. They even help farmers by pulling the worms out of corn!
Lastly, and not least, modern science recently admitted they still do not know how the bird can drill holes into wood with its head and not suffer death or injury.
“We grasp the stubborn and cantankerous proclivity of the birds as well as their redeeming loyalty”–Ana Norman, Symbiosis of Art and Science in Audubon’s Pileated Woodpecker
Look for pileated woodpeckers on Clover Park’s Flett Creek property and in wooded areas around Washington State. Though of course, you might just as easily hear their mocking laughter over your head.