Here at Stone State Park we have many winter residents from
the common back yard birds such as the Black-capped Chickadee and the Dark-eyed
Junco to the elusive ten-point buck, who is still celebrating making it through
another fall, but this year someone new may have moved to Stone Park. The
Pileated Woodpecker, North America’s largest woodpecker, has now been seen six
times since October by three different people, all of which are wildlife
professionals of some capacity. This particular woodpecker is a year round
resident in Eastern Iowa but has not been seen in the Park in many decades.
The Pileated Woodpecker is a mostly dark
grey to black bird with a conspicuous white line running down the sides of its
face and neck and a brilliant red crest. It is roughly the size of a crow and
when it is in flight large white patches on the leading edge of the wings are
quite obvious, making this bird easily identified even by the occasional bird
watcher.
If interested in seeing these new arrivals it may be nice to
know where to look and fortunately they have been in two somewhat distinct
locations. The woodpecker was first sighted south-east of the Dorothy Pecaut
Nature Center which is on Highway 12. This was back around November 1st
but just recently it was seen at the Nature Center itself, making it a
potentially warm place to search. The second place, where due in part to increased
park activity the Woodpecker has been seen much more often has been all around
the Carolyn Benne Self-guided Nature Trail, north and east of Stone Park’s campground.
The roads may be closed for the winter but this area is still accessible by
foot if one is willing to brave winter’s handy work of snow and cold. It was
here in the valley east of the campgrounds where park volunteers saw at least
one bird flying and calling loudly and thought they heard two separate birds later
that day. Pileated Woodpeckers are non-migratory, maintaining pair bonds, and
defending territories year round, so it is quite likely that if there are
indeed two birds in the Park, then they are here to stay.
Pileated woodpecker habitat consists of large areas of
woodlands of either deciduous or coniferous with plenty of large snags
(standing dead trees) and other down woody debris. This bird prefers river
basins and the larger the trees the better, making Stone State Park an
excellent new home for this bird. The Park’s continued effort to maintain the
remnants of Iowa’s Tall grass prairie in the Loess Hills produces many of these
large snags. The snags formed today will stand for many years providing great
woodpecker habitat for some time and encouraging many future sightings of the
Pileated Woodpecker.
Although this may not be the first time that this woodpecker
has been to Stone Park it made its presence official this time. Until this
year, the Pileated Woodpecker has never made it on Sioux City’s annual
Christmas Bird Count, but this year, thanks to the local Audubon Society, it
has been formally recorded as present here in Sioux City, Iowa.
#–C.W.
