Pileated Woodpecker

Meet one of the common avian residents of Bradford Woods: the Pileated Woodpecker. This male Pileated Woodpecker was making a new “excavation” in this tree by the waterfront the other day. Pileated Woodpeckers are the largest woodpeckers in North America, and mostly eat wood-boring insects that nest in trees, including long-horned beetles and carpenter ants. To get to the insects, these woodpeckers will frequently chip out oval or rectangular excavations in the trees in which they forage.