A New Park Resident.

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 1^st 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.