Pileated Woodpeckers Foraging For Last of Wild Grapes
Carpenter Ants and wood-boring beetle larvae are the mainstay of the Pileated Woodpecker’s diet. Long slivers of wood in trees and logs are removed in order to expose ant galleries, creating large rectangular excavations. The woodpecker’s long, pointed, barbed tongue and its sticky saliva enable it to catch and extract ants from the ants’ tunnels.
While ants and beetle larvae are consumed year-round, fruits and nuts are eaten when available. A study that took place in the Northeast found seasonal shifts in primary food items: fruit in fall, Carpenter Ants in winter, wood-boring beetle larvae in early spring, and a variety of insects in summer.
Naturally Curious is supported by donations. If you choose to contribute, you may go to http://www.naturallycuriouswithmaryholland.wordpress.com and click on the yellow “donate” button.
Pileated Woodpecker Feeding Hole Embellishment
Large rectangular excavations in trees, indicating Pileated Woodpecker feeding activity, are relatively common. These holes give the woodpecker access to carpenter ants living in galleries within the tree. What are not common are the horizontal lines radiating out from either side of the top rectangular Pileated Woodpecker feeding hole (and, more subtly, the bottom two holes) in the pictured tree.
Pileated Woodpeckers use methods other than drilling rectangular holes to locate insects – they glean branches, trunks and logs, peck bark and scale bark off of trees. But these lines are unusual, to say the least. If anyone is familiar with this pattern, and would care to explain the function of these horizontal lines, it would be greatly appreciated. After racking my brain and checking several resources, I cannot come up with a plausible explanation, though inevitably there has to be one, for no pileated woodpecker, or any other creature, is about to waste precious energy, especially in a winter as cold as this one. (Thanks to photographer, naturalist and keen-eyed John Snell (http://stilllearningtosee.com/about/) for finding and sharing this discovery with Naturally Curious.)
Naturally Curious is supported by donations. If you choose to contribute, you may go to http://www.naturallycuriouswithmaryholland.wordpress.com and click on the yellow “donate” button.
Naturally Curious with Mary Holland 
What Other Naturally Curious People Are Saying