Pileated Woodpecker

Tree

Let me tell you a bit about the Pileated woodpecker. They are enormous for a woodpecker-crow sized.

Here's what The Audobon Societ Field Guide to North American Birds has to say about them:

"Despite its size, this elegant woodpecker is adept at keeping out of sight. Obtaining a close view of one usually requires carefull stalking. Although primarily a forest bird, the "Logcock" has recently become adapted to civilization and has become relatively numerous even on the outskirts of large cities, where its presence is most easily detected by its loud, ringing call and by its large, characteristically rectangular excavations in trees."

To say that I was incredibly lucky to have been alerted to the presence of two pileated woodpeckers by their hammering and barking dropping; to stalk and then return up the ridge to the house for my woefully-inadequate-for-bird -shot cam, without a tripod, and still catch this pic is...amazing.

Once you see one of these, they are gone. Usually you hear them or see evidence of them, as the quote says. I sat on an old stump and took blurry pic after blurry pic-amazed that they didn't fly off.