Nature note: Searching for woodpecker poop
Have you ever been reading a book about nature and said “Huh! I need to go find that and see it for myself!”?
The other day, I was reading a few pages in one of my newfound favorite books, “Naturally Curious” by Mary Holland, when that very thing happened. The section was on pileated woodpeckers, which are Maine’s largest woodpeckers. They’re about the size of a crow, with a bright red cap and long, pointed beak. They’re the type of bird that commands attention.
In the book, Holland describes the big, oblong holes that pileated woodpeckers carve out of trees with their strong beaks in search of insects such as ants. I’ve found those cavities many times. I’ve also heard them described as rectangular. Often a woodpecker will create several of them in one dead tree, and a pile of wood shavings can be found at the base of the tree. All of that was old news to me, but Holland provided an observation tip I’d never heard of before:
“When you see a tree with fresh oblong pileated woodpecker holes and a pile of wood chips at the base of the trunk, look for pileated woodpecker scat — usually consisting of the exoskeletons of carpenter ants,” she wrote.
I also learned that pileated woodpeckers “scrape” the ants out of the tree with their barbed tongue.
A few days after reading that interesting tidbit, I was walking along a forest trail near my home when I came upon a dead tree filled with fresh pileated woodpecker holes. I knelt down and looked closely at the shavings on the ground and, sure enough, there was the woodpecker poop. It looked more like a pellet of dehydrated ants or some other type of dark insect. With that little observation, I could get an idea of what the woodpecker had been harvesting from the tree. (I suppose with some dissection, I could have learned more … but I wasn’t that eager.)
Typically I’m not super interested in bird poop, but there’s something exciting about reading something in a book, then going out and finding it in the wilderness. I’m enthusiastic to learn more observation tips from “Naturally Curious.” I’m reading the book slowly and taking notes as I go.
P.S. Just yesterday, my friend Kim messaged me asking, “What bird sounds like it’s laughing?”
My first reply was: “I know a frog that sounds like it’s laughing.”
Kim insisted that she was hearing a bird because the sound moved quickly from one side of her yard to the other — so the creature must have been flying.
“Pileated woodpecker?” I guessed, sending her a link to a video of a pileated woodpecker producing its loud, chattering call. “That’s it!” she replied. Mystery solved.