This morning I was in the Carolina Room when I heard what sounded like a jack-hammer in the woods behind us. It didn't take me long to discover the source. A large piliated wood-pecker was eyeballing me from a nearby tree. The I saw another, and another...the entire family had come to visit. They were hanging out no more than ten feet from our back door.
The first time we saw one of these birds we couldn't believe our eyes. I wondered if some prankster had slipped something into our iced teas. They look exactly like an over-sized real life 'Woody the Woodpecker'.. But we soon learned that The Pileated Woodpecker (Dryocopus pileatus) is a very large North American woodpecker,
roughly crow-sized, commonly inhabiting deciduous forests in eastern North
America, the Great Lakes, the boreal forests of Canada, and parts of the
Pacific coast. It is also the largest woodpecker in the United States,
excepting the possibly extinct Ivory-billed woodpecker. Common or not it is still fascinating to watch up close and in person.
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