One Grand Woodpecker

The Pileated Woodpecker (Dryocopus pileatus) is an impressive creature. Nearly the size of a Crow (Corvus brachyrhynchos). I have fond memories of one landing, and working on, a tree within a few feet of my bedroom window when I lived in North Arlington many years ago. It sounded like a human, up in the tree, pounding on it with a heavy hammer.

This Woodpecker is the largest Woodpecker on our continent, unless of course, you still consider the Ivory Billed Woodpecker to still be alive and well.

The ivory-billed woodpecker is a woodpecker native to the bottomland hardwood forests and temperate coniferous forests of the Southern United States and Cuba. The US Fish and Wildlife Service proposed listing it as extinct September 29, 2021.

Published by

Brenda Clements Jones

Brenda is a certified Virginia Master Naturalist, a Habitat Defender for Shenandoah National Park, and a devoted fan of Mother Nature. She lives in a cabin in the Blue Ridge Mountains near Shenandoah National Park, and hikes up to the higher elevations of her mountain often to see what nature is up to. Her constant hiking companion is a camera that captures nature as it unfolds through the seasons. It’s her goal to share the natural world around her through her photographs.