Pileated Woodpecker

Pileated Woodpecker - Our Largest Woodpecker

Pileated Woodpecker - Adult Female

Imagine you are walking peacefully in our forest and a loud, high-pitched 'kuk kuk keekeekeekeekeekeekuk kuk' sound bursts forth from the trees near you.  It makes the hair stand up on the back of your neck but soon you see the beautiful creature making the song.  A large crow-sized blackish bird lands on a dead tree near you.  You now see our largest and, in some ways, most beautiful woodpecker.   It is not ver wary of humans and usually goes about feeding while you watch.

The Pileated Woodpecker (Dryocopus pileatus) is 42 cm (16 in) long and is immediately recognizable as a large blackish woodpecker with a crest on its head.  It is loud, boisterous and flamboyant.  It is usually seen on dead and dying trees and stumps chipping off large pieces of wood looking for its favourite food, ants, insect larvae and beetles.

Pileated Woodpecker - Adult Female

The Pileated Woodpecker is North America's largest woodpecker except for the extinct or nearly-extinct Ivory-billed Woodpecker.  It is mostly black with a dark gray bill.  Most noticeable is its scarlet red crest.  The red on the crest extends down to the bill in males but stops on the forehead in females as shown in the top photo above.  Males also have a red malar stripe (from the edge to the bill onto the side of the throat).  This malar stripe is black in the female.  The Pileated Woodpecker has a white chin and a large white stripe running from the bill across the face and down the neck to the side of the breast.  The wings have a large white patch at the base of the primary feathers and a large amount of white under the wings.  The white at the base of the primary feathers shows as a large white patch in flight.  The feet, legs and tail are black.  The two photos above show adult females.  Below see a male feeding his offspring.

Pileated Woodpecker - Adult Male [Internet Photo]

The Pileated Woodpecker is found over much of Canada except the far north and the prairie area of southern Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba.  It is also found in the eastern United States.  It is a non-migratory species so we can see it year round.

Like other woodpeckers these woodpeckers drum on hollow trees to claim territory.  Their drumming is loud and rather slow at about 15 beats per second.  The Downy and Hairy Woodpeckers beat at about 17 to 25 beats per second (Sibley).  Pileated Woodpeckers build their nests in tree cavities where they lay 3 to 8 white eggs.  Both adults tend to the incubation and rearing of the young.

According to iBirdPro, Pileated Woodpeckers make extra holes leading from their nest cavities to allow escape from predators.  They also claim that this species pecks the bark around the entrance to their nest cavities to make the sticky sap running from the pecked bark deter some predators such as snakes.  Our balsam fir trees would be good for that!  It would be interesting to see what percentage of Pileated Woodpecker nests here are in balsam firs.

I hope you see a Pileated Woodpecker the next time you go for a walk in the woods.  If you do, you will be truly blessed.

Fredericton Christmas Bird Count

Fredericton CBC - Douglas Sector

Hairy Woodpecker

The Fredericton Christmas Bird Count took place on Sunday, December 16.  The weather was sunny and plus 3º which made for a wonderful day outside.  We do the Douglas sector, covering an area from upper Nashwaaksis to approximately Grand Pass on the St. John River with all the side roads and subdivisions in between.  It takes a full day to cover this area adequately.  

We set out just after sunrise and spent the next 2 hours covering the open water patches on the river.  Most of the waterfowl was at Grand Pass and below.  Before we got out of the car we could hear the geese.  The sight that awaited us was astounding, one we had never seen on a CBC before.  There were geese everywhere, on the water, on the land and in the air.  Some were feeding, some were sleeping.  Mixed in with the geese were ducks.  

Counting the geese was difficult but with practice one learns how.  We counted 400 geese there that morning.  Mixed in with the flock and also in flocks nearby were about 100 ducks, both American Black Ducks and Mallards.  I checked the flock of geese over at least 3 times searching for something other than our familiar Canada Goose.  Sometimes these flocks contain White-fronted Geese or other rarer species.  This flock was all Canadas.  

Rusty Blackbird

This year there has been an influx of winter finches and the count revealed some of them.  We had Pine Grosbeaks, Evening Grosbeaks, Bohemian Waxwings, Dark-eyed Juncos and a single of each American Tree Sparrow and Common Redpoll.  The Pine Grosbeaks and the Waxwings were feeding on the abundance of fruit still on the trees in the area.  At one place we found 3 Pine Grosbeaks, 4 Bohemian Waxwings and 8 American Robins feeding in the trees and on the ground on crabs and grapes.  What a wonderful sight that was!

Gray Catbird

Occasionally on a count we find something rare.  In this case 'rare' means it is most unusual to find this species here in winter.  On this count we were lucky to find 2 rare species at one stop.  We were standing on the river bank counting waterfowl and the local chickadees and suddenly a larger bird showed itself from the tangle of bushes.  It looked like a blackbird and on closer examination I could see it was a Rusty Blackbird.  But wait, there was another bird there, too.  That one we followed as it moved from bush to bush.  A catbird!  Wow!  Never in 50 years of doing Christmas bird counts have I seen a catbird on a count!  But there it was.  We could see the black cap and watched awhile to see the cinnamon patch on the vent to totally confirm the species.  Unfortunately, it did not 'meow' at us which it normally would do in summer.  See photos above of a Rusty Blackbird and a Gray Catbird.

We had our normal number of woodpeckers, Downy and Hairy.  But at one point we were driving along slowly and I spied movement at the side of the road.  An abrupt stop showed a Pileated Woodpecker on a tree stump immediately beside the road.  It was pecking on the stump and paused long enough for a good look before it moved to nearby trees.  Doing bird counts often offers wonderful treats like that.  On this count we saw 991 individual birds from 30 species.  That is a good day's count!

Bird counters usually also count mammals on their routes.  We saw 21 white-tailed deer.  That is a very high number.  At one place there were 11 deer!  These animals are raiding bird feeders constantly.  They were so tame they were stamping their feet, defying me to come close to the feeders.  How do they get the food out of the feeders?  Easy for them!  They just hook the feeders with their antlers or bump them with their noses and thus dump the seed on the ground.  

The Christmas Count Period runs from Dec. 14 to Jan. 5.  We are interested in recording any new species that were not found on count day.  If you see anything that is not listed here, please contact me by commenting on this post.  Many thanks.  See below for a list of the birds we saw on count day. 

Canada Goose   400
American Black Duck 28
Mallard               94
Common Goldeneye      24
Hooded Merganser       8
Common Merganser      27
Bald Eagle            3
Rock Pigeon        23
Mourning Dove   32
Downy Woodpecker      6
Hairy Woodpecker      6
Pileated Woodpecker        1
Northern Shrike     1
Blue Jay               12
American Crow    39
Common Raven                3
Black-capped Chickadee     121
White-breasted Nuthatch  7
Red-breasted Nuthatch  3
American Robin  10
European Starling  3
Bohemian Waxwing  4
American Tree Sparrow  1
Dark-eyed Junco  14
Pine Grosbeak  19
Common Redpoll  1
American Goldfinch  83
Evening Grosbeak  16
Rusty Blackbird  1
Gray Catbird  1

Brown Creeper

Brown Creeper - More Common Than You Think

Brown Creeper

The Brown Creeper (Certhia americana) is the only member of the Certhiidae family found in the Americas.  Members of the family are found in forested areas around the Northern Hemisphere.  Recent DNA studies have shown that they are closely related to nuthatches, chickadees, wrens and gnatcatchers.  

The Brown Creeper is a small (13 cm or 5.3 in long), streamlined bird which is brown streaked on top and white below with a long tail.  It has a long decurved bill and long toes.  It is always seen clinging to tree bark propping itself with its tail.  It gleans insects and arachnids from under bark while spiralling up the tree trunk and large branches.  When finished one tree it flies to another and lands at the base of the tree to again spiral upwards. 

The Brown Creeper seems uncommon in occurrence because we don't often see it due to its good camouflage and seeming quietness.  It actually vocalizes but it is so high-pitched many people cannot hear it.  The high-pitched 'tseee, tseee' is made while it feeds and flies from tree to tree.  It does have a song that can be heard in breeding season.  Many birders do not recognize this song.  It is a variable warbling which consists of several notes.  Sibley depicts it as 'seee seeedsee sideeu'.  I remember how amazed I was to finally authenticate that song as coming from the Brown Creeper.

Brown Creeper [Internet Photo]

The Creeper nest is interesting.  It is built against a tree trunk under a large slab of bark.  It is made of shredded bark, feathers, sticks and moss.  It often has two openings, an entrance and an exit.  The 4 to 8 white eggs are marked with reddish brown.  

The Brown Creeper population is thought to have declined in late years due to habitat destruction. Fortunately here in New Brunswick they are fairly common.  This species does show some variation in populations across the Americas.  Regional variation shows as birds that are grayer or more reddish brown.  In addition, the species manifests in 3 morphological forms: reddish, brown and gray morphs.  The only morphs I have seen here are reddish brown.  The song varies somewhat across the continent as well. 

The Brown Creeper is considered a permanent resident here.  That is generally the case throughout its range in the Americas except in the northern parts of Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba and Saskatchewan.  However, it is thought that some of our population migrates in winter to warmer climes.  None of our birders have reported flocks of migrating Brown Creepers so I expect the migration would be very limited, perhaps from northern NB to southern NB or into Maine.

Blue Jay

Blue Beauty Right Under Our Noses

Blue Jay [Marbeth Wilson Photo]

You might not have noticed but we have blue beauty right under our noses.  And lots of it.  The Blue Jay (Cyanocitta cristata) is such a common local bird that we tend to overlook it on our quest to see rare birds or the not-so-common local birds like cardinals and orioles.  Its aggressive behaviour around our feeders also tends to make us wish they would move on.  

I once had a visitor from Labrador who was very excited to see a Blue Jay because they are not found there.  To listen to him remark about how great it was to see one made me rethink our attitude towards this beautiful bird.  Sometimes we need to reconsider what we take for granted.

The Blue Jay is a medium-sized jay with distinctive blue plumage.  It is the only North American bird with bright blue and white wings and tail.  It has a blue crest, white underparts and a dark necklace.  At 28 cm (11 in) long it is bigger than the robin (25 cm/10 in).  Juveniles look like the adults but are more grayish and have more limited white on the wings.  There are 3 subspecies of this species and they differ in size and brightness.  The bromia subspecies that lives here is the largest and brightest.  The Blue Jay is so distinctive in appearance you are not likely to mistake it for any other species here.  In the west, however, it can be mistaken for the Steller's Jay.  

Blue Jay

The Blue Jay readily comes to feeders where it dominates other birds.  Other birds tend to wait until the jays are finished rather than raise their scorn.  Blue Jays eat seeds, insects, fruits, nuts, mice and frogs.  They will sometimes raid the nests of other birds and take their eggs or nestlings.  They can open nuts by holding them with their feet and hammering them with their bill.  

Blue Jays are very vocal.  We are all familiar with their shrill 'jay, jay' call.  They also emit a variety of other sounds; gurgles, whistles and rattles.  They can also mimic other species especially raptors.  

Blue Jay

Most people are not aware that Blue Jays undergo some migration.  They are permanent residents across southern Canada from Alberta east to Newfoundland and south to Texas and Florida.  There is a small migration from the northern reaches of their range in winter.  That is why we see flocks of Blue Jays in fall here.  They are moving south from central Quebec or northern Ontario to warmer climates for the winter.  

Blue Jays build their nests high in trees in coniferous forests, mixed woods and suburbs.  The nest is made of sticks and lined with grass.  Three to 7 bluish green eggs marked with brown are laid.  Both parents incubate the eggs.  

 

You may have already suspected that the jay is intelligent.  It is a member of the Corvidae family, comprised of jays and crows.  We are familiar with the intelligence of crows and ravens, cousins to the jays.  Experiments have been done on jays and show that they know how to use tools.  They have made tools to get at the desired food.  Another interesting fact is that the blue of the blue jay is not real pigment which most would assume.  It is caused by the way light refracts from the structure of the feather.  If a blue jay feather is ground up, the blue disappears!  A neat fact for the scientific birder. 

When the jays come to your feeder tomorrow, look at them now for their unique beauty!