Pileated Woodpecker

The Pileated Woodpecker is a crow-sized black woodpecker with a flaming red crest, the biggest woodpecker most people in North America will ever see. A bold white stripe starts at the base of the bill and runs over the cheek and down the side of the neck, with a dark stripe through the eye and a thin white line above it. The neck is long, the crest sweeps back from the head in a triangle, and the long, chisel-tipped bill is about as long as the head.

In flight it shows a large white area under each wing, bordered with black along the trailing edge and wingtip, while from above there is only a small white crescent at the base of the flight feathers. The flight is strong, rather slow and slightly undulating, which helps tell it from a crow at a distance.

The "black" is really a very dark brown that can look browner in worn feathers. In fall, fresh feathers on the flanks have white tips that give faint barring for a few months. Northern birds average bigger than southern ones, and Pacific slope birds tend to have grayer throats.

A Pileated Woodpecker is 16-19 in (40-49 cm) long, with a wingspan of 26-29.5 in (66-75 cm), and weighs 8.8-12.3 oz (250-350 g): nearly the size of an American Crow. Males are 10-15% heavier than females; in Oregon, live males averaged 11.5 oz (324.8 g) and females 9.9 oz (280.7 g).¹

It is the largest woodpecker in most of North America. In North America only the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, formerly of the Southeast and Cuba, and the Imperial Woodpecker of western Mexico are bigger, and it is about the sixth largest woodpecker in the world.¹

Both sexes have the red crest. A male is red all the way from the bill over the crown, and has a red "mustache" stripe on the cheek. A female has a gray-brown to blackish forehead in front of the crest and a black mustache. In a pair seen together, the forehead and the mustache settle it at once.

Juveniles, seen from June to August, already show the same head differences as adults, so young males and young females can be told apart. They have shorter crests, brown eyes (adults usually have yellow eyes), more yellow at the corners of the mouth and softer, duller feathers. In the nest, young can be sexed at 9-10 days old, when the crown feathers show through the skin, and a young male's red mustache appears by about two weeks.¹

Across its range the Pileated is the only big black-and-white woodpecker, so it is easy to identify. The one bird it gets confused with is the Ivory-billed Woodpecker. Birds of the World's account, written in 2011, says most Ivory-billed reports involve Pileateds, often partly white birds with symmetrical white in the wings.¹

• The bill. A Pileated's bill is dark; an Ivory-billed's is pale ivory.
• The wings. A perched Pileated shows little or no white on the folded wing; an Ivory-billed shows a big white shield on the folded wings, across the lower back. In flight, a Pileated's white is confined to the underwing coverts, leaving the trailing edge dark; on an Ivory-billed the white runs onto the secondaries.
• Size. An Ivory-billed is bigger still.

The Ivory-billed's status is unsettled. Under the US Endangered Species Act it is still listed as Endangered.² In 2021 the US Fish and Wildlife Service proposed removing it from the list due to extinction; the last sighting most people accept was in Louisiana in 1944.³ In 2022 the Service put off its decision, citing substantial disagreement about the bird's status,⁴ and in 2023, when it delisted 21 other species, it said a separate, future publication would either finalize the delisting or withdraw it and keep the bird listed as endangered.⁵ We found no final decision in the Federal Register up to November 2026. The world checklist AviList marks it as possibly extinct.⁶ Any new report should come with clear photos or video.

The likeness is skin deep. DNA studies show the two are only distantly related, and place the Pileated's genus near a group of large gray Southeast Asian woodpeckers, though exactly how these branch is not settled.¹

Red-headed Woodpecker. Much smaller, about 7.5-9 in (19-23 cm). Adults have the whole head red, clean white underparts and big white patches in the wings that make the lower back look white.

American Crow. In flight at a distance, a Pileated can look like a crow. Look for the white underwings and the undulating flight; a crow is all black and flies straight.

Woodpeckers have no song. The Pileated's best-known sound is a loud, ringing series of "cuk" or "wuk" notes that rises and falls, used to claim the territory and in alarm. It is the "jungle" call heard in old movies and sounds like a louder version of a flicker's call. Calls are simple, one or two syllables, and females call at a higher pitch than males. At close range, pairs also trade a short run of high "wok" notes and soft "wichew" and "chuck" greetings at the nest.

Both sexes drum, females apparently less often. The drum is a slow, loud, resonant roll that speeds up and fades at the end: 11-30 beats at about 15-17 beats a second.¹ A classic Maryland study found bursts of about 3 seconds, usually repeated every 40-60 seconds four to seven times in a row; one unmated male drummed on and off for three hours.⁷ It drums all year, but most in early spring, mostly in the morning and high on a dead trunk that carries the sound. In Florida, calls and drumming peaked in mid-March, just before nesting, and dropped off by early April.¹ Farther north, recorders in Alberta found drumming peaked near sunrise in early April.⁸ Measured drums vary: five California birds averaged 1.7 seconds, about 14 beats a second and 24 beats a drum, speeding up within each drum.⁹

Its slow, heavy feeding blows carry a long way too, and imitating them by knocking on a tree can bring a curious Pileated in close.

Pileated Woodpeckers live all year across the forested East, from Nova Scotia, southern Quebec and Ontario to southern Florida and east Texas, and along wooded river bottoms into the Great Plains. A band of forest carries them across southern Canada to British Columbia, and in the West they live in Washington, Oregon, the northern Rockies and south to central California. They are missing from the Florida Keys, Long Island and some coastal areas of the Northeast.

They need big trees: mature deciduous, coniferous or mixed forest with large dead trees and fallen logs, or younger forest with scattered big dead trees left standing. In the East they also live in wooded suburbs, parks and backyards with large trees; in the West they rely more on old forest. The surest signs are large, fresh, rectangular holes in dead wood, with chips piled below.

Where the forest is right they are widespread: automated recorders at 3,948 sites across the Pacific Northwest picked them up at 83% of them.¹⁰ They need more woodland than smaller woodpeckers, though. In Portland, Oregon, a green space needed about 126 acres (51 ha) of woods for an even chance of holding Pileateds, against under 3.7 acres (1.5 ha) for a Downy Woodpecker.¹¹ Wooded suburbs can suit them: around Seattle, 13 of 14 nests of radio-tagged birds fledged young, and survival of 16 tagged adults averaged 83% a year, similar to natural forests in the region.¹²

Eastern forests were once cleared so thoroughly that Pileateds became rare, and they were shot for food and sport. They began to come back in the 1920s and 1930s, as abandoned farmland returned to forest and after laws protected them, and they have kept increasing and spreading since.

No. Pairs stay on their territory all year. Young birds wander in fall after leaving their parents, and birds in the mountains may move lower in winter, but there is no regular migration.

Pileated Woodpeckers eat mainly carpenter ants and the larvae of wood-boring beetles, dug out of dead and dying wood, with termites, other insects and wild fruits, berries and nuts when they are available. They chisel deep, rectangular holes to reach ant galleries, sometimes over a foot (30 cm) long and deep enough to break a small tree, and pull the ants out with a long, barbed tongue coated in sticky saliva. They often feed on fallen logs and near the bases of trees, and occasionally on the ground.

A 1911 US government study of 80 stomachs from 14 states and Canada found ants made up 40% of the food, beetles 22%, other insects 11% and plant food 27%, most of it wild fruit (22.6%).¹³ In northeastern Oregon, 330 droppings held 68% carpenter ants and 29% thatching ants.¹ Carpenter ants matter most in winter: in western Washington they made up 71% of the diet from November to February but 34% from March to June, when beetle larvae and termites took up more.¹

Fruits include greenbrier, hackberry, sassafras, blackberries, sumac and poison ivy, holly, dogwood, black gum, persimmon, elderberry and wild grapes, and in South Carolina they are often seen eating magnolia seeds. Their big feeding holes help other birds too: other woodpeckers and House Wrens feed in them.

A Pileated at a feeder is a thrill. Where there are big woods nearby it may come for suet, especially in a suet cage, and it also takes black oil and hulled sunflower seed, peanuts, peanut hearts and mealworms. Leaving dead trees and snags standing where they are safe gives it places to feed, roost and even nest.

Each spring a pair digs a new nest hole, usually in a large dead tree or a dead part of a living one, often a snag with a broken top. Both dig, but the male does more, and the work takes about 3-6 weeks; in northeastern Oregon males did 2-5 times as much digging as females.¹⁴ The entrance is oblong, taller than wide, not round like most woodpecker holes: in northeastern Oregon nests it averaged about 4.7 in (12 cm) tall and 3.5 in (9 cm) wide.¹ Inside, the cavity is 10-24 in (25-61 cm) deep, lined only with leftover wood chips. Nests are usually 15-80 ft (about 5-24 m) up. Old nest holes are rarely reused for nesting (just one of 123 northeastern Oregon nests was in an old cavity), but they may become roosts.¹

Laying starts in March in Florida and Texas and runs into May and June in the north and the Northwest. The clutch is 3-5 white eggs, most often 4. Both parents incubate, the male at night; incubation takes about 15-18 days, though older books give 18 and few nests have been timed. The young are fed on regurgitated insects by both parents and leave the nest at 24-31 days old. Pairs raise one brood a year and may try again if the first nest fails early.

Families stay together after fledging: the young follow their parents and depend on them for several months, into at least September, and sometimes the family splits, each parent taking some of the young. In the same Oregon study, 83% of 81 nests succeeded, with an average of 2.26 young near fledging (42 nests), and birds bred when a year old.¹⁴ For a closer look, see our guides to Pileated Woodpecker nesting and juvenile Pileated Woodpeckers.

Nest boxes are fairly new to Pileated Woodpeckers, but a pair may take one where big dead trees are scarce. A box for them has a 4 in (102 mm) entrance and is 24 in (61 cm) deep inside, packed full of sawdust so the bird can dig out its own chamber, and goes 15-20 ft (4.6-6.1 m) up on a tree inside mature hardwood forest.¹⁵

A pair holds its territory all year, defending it with drumming, loud calls and chases. Home ranges are large: about 1,000 acres (407 ha) on average for seven pairs followed for 5-10 months in northeastern Oregon, though birds tracked in Arkansas bottomland forest in the breeding season used around 136 acres (54.9 ha).¹ In displays a bird spreads its wings to flash the white patches, raises its crest and swings its head.

Pairs presumably stay together for life, though in Alberta two pairs split while both birds were alive.¹ If one bird dies, the other stays on the territory and finds a new mate, one of the main ways new birds get a territory.¹

Each bird sleeps alone in a cavity, usually in a tree already rotted hollow inside, often digging only the entrance; roost trees often have several holes, giving escape routes. Radio-tagged birds in northeastern Oregon roosted in cavities at all 443 night-time checks of 22 birds, each using about 7 roost trees, probably more, over 3-10 months.¹

Pileated holes shelter a whole community. At least 38 species of birds and mammals are known to use old Pileated nest and roost cavities, among them Wood Ducks, Buffleheads, goldeneyes, owls, kestrels and swifts, and martens, flying squirrels and bats, and in the Alberta foothills more than half (53.5%) of the Pileated cavities inspected showed use by other animals; large natural tree holes were so rare there that the woodpeckers made almost all of them.¹⁶ That is why the bird is often called a keystone species.

The oldest Pileated Woodpecker on the USGS Bird Banding Laboratory's list was at least 12 years 11 months old: a male banded in Maryland in 1979 and caught again, and released, there in 1991; the list holds only one other bird, a New York male of 9 years that was found dead in 1951.¹⁷

In northeastern Oregon, mean yearly survival of 28 color-banded adults was at least 64%.¹⁴ Northern Goshawks, Cooper's and Red-tailed hawks, Great Horned Owls, martens, fishers and gray foxes kill adults; in Alberta, birds of prey, mostly goshawks, killed 11 of 17 radio-tagged adults that died or disappeared.¹⁶ Rat snakes, squirrels, weasels, owls and hawks take eggs and young: video at 32 Arkansas nests showed black rat snakes entering 14, and young fledged from only 3 of those.¹ Birds are also killed now and then by lightning striking their tall nest and roost trees, and by traffic.

The Pileated Woodpecker is common, increasing and rated Least Concern. The North American Breeding Bird Survey shows a steady rise of about 1.28% a year from 1966 to 2025 across the survey (95% credible interval 1.04 to 1.49), statistically significant; the survey's index has roughly doubled since 1966 and was at its highest in 2025, the rise has not slowed (about 1.37% a year over 2015-2025), and Arkansas is the only state or province with a significant decline.¹⁸ Partners in Flight estimates about 2.6 million birds (for around 2010), up 120% from 1970 to 2021 on its analysis, and gives it a Continental Concern Score of 7 out of 20; it is not on the Watch List.¹⁹

It is protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act in the United States.²⁰ In Canada its nest stays protected after use: under the Migratory Birds Regulations, 2022, a Pileated nest may be damaged or removed without a permit only after written notice to the Minister 36 months beforehand, and only if no migratory bird has used it since the Minister received the notice; it is the only woodpecker with this rule.²¹

Its main need is big trees, living and dead, and fallen logs. Logging that removes them takes away nest, roost and feeding sites, and the Pileated is used as an indicator of mature forest on many National Forests.¹