Pileated woodpecker

I shot this video from my front porch on Tuesday morning, June 8. Pileateds are common here because we have an old forest with lots of standing dead and dying trees full of their favorite food: carpenter ants. They’re really neat birds, and I end up mentioning them often in The Morning Porch. This video doesn’t capture their oddness in flight, but it does show calling, drumming, and excavating.

For more on their life history, see the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s page.

See Via Negativa for more.