The pileated woodpecker is the largest woodpecker in North America and one of the most striking forest birds on the continent. With its bright red crest, jet-black body, and loud, ringing calls, the pileated woodpecker is unmistakable. Though these birds live across much of the U.S. and Canada, many people have never been lucky enough to catch sight of one. So what do these elusive birds eat? As it turns out, pileated woodpeckers have some favorite foods that are key to their survival.
The Basics of the Pileated Woodpecker’s Diet
Pileated woodpeckers are omnivores, meaning they eat both plant and animal matter. Their diet consists mainly of insects, berries, seeds, and nuts. Like all woodpeckers, they use their sharply pointed beak to hammer and chisel into wood, accessing the insects and larvae inside. Some of their favorite insect foods include carpenter ants, wood-boring beetle larvae, termites, caterpillars, and spiders. Pileated woodpeckers often excavate huge rectangular holes in trees while searching for ants deep inside the tunnels of their colonies. These excavations can be so extensive that they end up creating nesting sites used by other bird species.
In addition to insects, fruits and nuts round out the pileated woodpecker’s diet. These birds pluck berries and seeds from shrubs and trees and will occasionally visit feeders stocked with nuts, suet, and sunflower seeds. Their long, barbed tongues are perfect for extracting ants and other insects from the deep crevices they inhabit. Strong neck muscles allow them to generate the force needed to hammer relentlessly on wood. Several special adaptations, including thick neck feathers, help shield their brains from the high-deceleration pecking.
Carpenter Ants: A Favorite Food
While pileated woodpeckers eat a wide range of foods, carpenter ants are one of their top preferences. Carpenter ants get their name because they excavate and nest inside wood, potentially damaging the infrastructure of homes. Pileated woodpeckers provide valuable pest control by chiseling into wood that has been tunneled through by carpenter ants and using their long, sticky tongues to extract the ants. Their woodpecker beaks act like a utility tool, allowing access to ants deep within trees or logs thanks to their ability to hammer and excavate. Plus, carpenter ants happen to be rich in important nutrients for woodpeckers.
A pileated woodpecker’s diet consists of up to 60 percent ants, with carpenter ants being one of the most prevalent species. One study examining the stomach contents of over 150 pileated woodpeckers found that ants made up 54 percent of their diet by weight. Wood-boring beetle larvae were the second most common food at around 15 percent. But carpenter ants remained the single most important food item overall. Pileated woodpeckers will vigorously excavate into the large, maze-like galleries of carpenter ant colonies, using their beaks as picks and shovels. The ants provide ample nutrition in the form of carbohydrates, protein, and fat.
Why Carpenter Ants Are Beneficial Food for Woodpeckers
– Carpenter ants are abundant, especially in dead and decaying wood, making them a reliably plentiful food source.
– They can be accessed within the channels of their excavated nest galleries in logs and trees where woodpeckers forage.
– Carpenter ants are social insects that live in high density populations, allowing woodpeckers to extract many ants efficiently per excavation.
– As ants are relatively large compared to other insect species, they provide more nutrition per individual ant eaten.
– Carpenter ants have distended abdomens that can store nutritious fat and carbohydrate molecules which are high-energy food sources perfect for active pileated woodpeckers.
Berries, Nuts, and Seeds
In addition to carpenter ants and other insects, an integral part of the pileated woodpecker diet consists of plant material like seeds, berries, and nuts. These food sources become especially important in cold winter months when insects are less abundant. In particular, pileated woodpeckers seem to rely on the fruits of mountain ash, serviceberry, dogwood, wild cherry, grape, poison ivy, and more. Acorns are also a favored nut. These fruits allow pileated woodpeckers and other bird species to survive during seasons when animal prey might be scarce.
The types of plant foods eaten may vary by habitat and geographical region. For example, one study of pileated woodpecker diet in a pine forest found that animal material still made up 82% of food by weight, but fruit represented 17%, mostly from poison ivy and Virginia creeper. However, another study in a hardwood forest found slightly higher berry and nut consumption. The key point is that pileated woodpeckers do consume more vegetable material during parts of year when fewer wood-boring insects are active. This highlights their dietary flexibility.
Benefits of Berries and Seeds for Woodpeckers:
– Provide an abundance of carbohydrates for energy.
– Give essential vitamins and nutrients.
– Help meet dietary needs during seasons when insects and other prey are scarce.
– Can be accessed from plant sources throughout the woodpeckers’ habitats.
– Often fruit in large quantities, allowing easy foraging.
– Suet and seed feeders may provide backup food in winter.
Expert Hunting and Foraging Skills
To take full advantage of their favorite foods like carpenter ants and fruits, pileated woodpeckers employ special skills and adaptations that make them expert hunters and foragers. Here are some of the methods and features that help them access food:
– Powerful excavating beak to chisel deep into wood searching for carpenter ant galleries and tunnel entrances.
– Barbed tongue with sticky saliva to extract ants and termites from tunnels and holes.
– Strong neck muscles to generate repeated hammering force.
– Zygodactyl feet with two toes pointing forward and two back to grasp surfaces.
– Sharp claws for climbing and anchoring to tree trunks.
– Stealthy movement and patience to pinpoint prey locations.
– Intelligence to remember plentiful food sources and revisit them often.
– Ability to extract seeds and suet from tricky feeders meant to foil squirrels.
– Caching and storing food to save for periods of scarcity.
The effectiveness of the pileated woodpecker as a predator and forager means they can take advantage of their favorite foods in nearly any habitat. This partially explains their large range across North America. The techniques they use for finding and handling food enables them to thrive in forests from the Pacific Northwest to the Eastern Seaboard. Their powerful excavating skills are perfectly adapted to accessing delicious carpenter ants and other wood-dwelling insects.
Digestive System and Feeding Adaptations
Pileated woodpeckers have a number of special digestive adaptations that allow them to make the most of their diet, especially insect-heavy foods like carpenter ants. Some of these adaptations include:
– Powerful stomach muscles and gizzard for grinding up beetle larvae and ant exoskeletons.
– Highly acidic stomach pH of around 2.4 that aids in digestion of their mainly insectivorous diet.
– Short intestine but relatively long cecum to allow bacterial fermentation of vegetative matter.
– Presence of lysozyme protein in saliva that helps break down bacteria cell walls.
– Ability to feed nestlings regurgitated “ant soup”, made by mixing ant prey with saliva. This provides baby woodpeckers the nutrition they need.
– Feeding even tiny nestlings adult foods like ants and nuts instead of feeding more typical regurgitated seeds or softened insects.
– Long, barbed tongue adapted to extract slippery prey like ants from holes or crevices.
– Short gut transit time between ingestion and excretion of about 120 minutes, allowing efficient processing of food.
These adaptations allow pileated woodpeckers to thrive on a diet of mostly carpenter and other ants, wood-boring beetles, fruits, and nuts. Their specialized digestive system is finely tuned to make use of each food source.
Influence of Habitat on Food Availability
Since the abundance of carpenter ants, wood-boring beetles, and certain plant foods depends on the nature of the habitat, the diet of pileated woodpeckers can vary somewhat across their range depending on the ecosystem. For example:
– In pine forests, 83% of the diet was animal matter, dominated by carpenter ants and wood borers, while certain fruits were important seasonally.
– In hardwood forests and swamps with more standing dead trees, carpenter ants and beetle larvae are even more available year-round.
– In mixed forests, carpenter ants and a diversity of berries and seeds from multiple plant species support pileateds.
– In more urban or suburban areas, pileateds make use of lumber and man-made wooden structures infested with carpenter ants.
– Across much of the range, old-growth forests with numerous dead and dying trees provide an abundance of food sources.
So while carpenter ants and beetle larvae remain staple foods, the diversity and availability of other insects, fruits, nuts and seeds causes some variation in proportions of different foods in the diet across habitats. But the pileated woodpecker’s strong excavating ability andDigestive system plasticity allow it to flourish across forest types, as long as there are some standing dead trees harboring their favorite ant colonies. These habitat differences are likely a major reason why the pileated woodpecker is found in such an extensive range of forest ecosystems.
Conclusion
With their highly specialized hunting abilities, digestive systems, and foraging ecology, it’s no wonder pileated woodpeckers have a clear preference for delicious carpenter ants as a primary food source. But these resourceful birds also take advantage of seasonal fruits, nuts and seeds, along with other wood-boring insects, allowing them to thrive across a diversity of forest habitats. Although rarely seen, the unique excavating and feeding behaviors of the pileated woodpecker provide an important ecological service in our forests. Their specialized adaptations showcase the natural solutions some species have evolved for survival. Next time you come across characteristic rectangular excavations in a dead tree, it was likely the feeding work of the amazing pileated woodpecker.