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Updated: June 29, 2025
It must be a woodpecker, I thought, they make some strange noises, and there was a large one, the pileated, said to inhabit these woods, though I had never been able to see him. I went on more confidently then, for I must see what woodpecker baby could utter such cries. As I continued to advance, though I could still see nothing, I noticed that the tapping grew louder every moment.
It was one of the most delicate roadside flowers I had ever seen. The only new bird I saw in Maine was the pileated woodpecker, or black "log cock," called by Uncle Nathan "wood cock." I had never before seen or heard this bird, and its loud cackle in the woods about Moxie was a new sound to me. It is the wildest and largest of our northern woodpeckers, and the rarest.
A pioneer comes to a spot in the virgin forest which pleases him and proceeds at once to cut down the trees in order to make a clearing. The hermit thrush soothes his labour with its wonderful song; the pileated woodpecker pounds its disapproval upon a near-by hollow tree; the deer and wolf take a last look out through the trees and flee from the spot forever.
In Vermillion County, by long and persistent protection Harvey J. Sconce has bred back upon his farm about 400 of these birds. INDIANA: Pileated woodpecker, woodcock, ruffed grouse, pigeon hawk, duck hawk.
Above the house hangs a high, bold cliff covered with forest, with a broad fringe of blackened and blasted tree-trunks, where the cackling of the great pileated woodpecker may be heard; on the left a dense forest sweeps up to the sharp spruce-covered cone of the Wittenberg, nearly four thousand feet high, while at the head of the valley rises Slide over all.
If we had enough of them, our forests would be fairly safe from insect pests. It is one of the smallest species. The contents of 140 stomachs consisted of 74 per cent insects, 25 per cent vegetable matter and 1 per cent sand. The insects were ants, beetles, bugs, flies, caterpillars, grasshoppers and a few spiders. The Pileated is one of the largest, but we never see it.
The large Steller's jay makes merry in the pine-tops; flocks of beautiful green swallows skim over the streams, and the noisy Clarke's crow may oftentimes be seen on the highest points around the Valley; and in the deep woods beyond the walls you may frequently hear and see the dusky grouse and the pileated woodpecker, or woodcock almost as large as a pigeon.
And now the noisy blue-jay is calling "Thief thief thief!" in the distance, and a pair of great pileated woodpeckers with crimson crests are laughing loudly in the swamp over some family joke. But listen! what is that harsh creaking note? It is the cry of the Northern shrike, of whom tradition says that he catches little birds and impales them on sharp thorns.
Pleasures of another kind are to find a new bird, and to see an old bird in a new place, as I did recently in the old sugar-bush where I used to help gather and boil sap as a boy. It was the logcock, or pileated woodpecker, a rare bird anywhere, and one I had never seen before on the old farm.
Only the creepers and the great pileated woodpeckers seemed to inhabit these truly cloistral shades. The breeze passed through branches too elevated to permit its whisperings to be heard. The very sound of the horses' hoofs was muffled in the thick carpet of pine needles.
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