Penn Wood Feeder Watch Program

                                                                Pileated Woodpeckers Visit Penn Wood

On a windy February 13, 2008, students were amazed to see for the first time, a pair of Pileated Woodpeckers visiting  trees near our feeding stations in our center courtyard. These birds selected a small yellow poplar about ten inches in diameter, and started drilling huge holes into the bark just several feet off the ground. These beautiful, huge woodpeckers have an incredible ability to sense ant colonies, grubs, and insects living in diseased trees. This tree looked perfect on the outside to our observers but examination of the woodpecker holes revealed decay. It is amazing that these magnificent birds would be able to identify a tree that was hollow and contained food with no visual clues.

Pileated Woodpeckers are one of the largest woodpeckers in North America. The only observed larger woodpecker is the Ivory Billed, which has not been spotted in recent years. These woodpeckers are dwellers of the dense woods, and are not commonly sighted in Chester County.  Pileated  Woodpeckers are about the size of a large crow, making a sighting a truly memorable event.

As we continue to monitor our winter birds at Penn Wood, we must reflect on how birds can be a great indicator of wellness in our environment. Issues such as habitat loss, chemical spraying on lawns and trees, and water quality all are factored into the birds we see . Coal miners took canaries into the mines to warn the miners of poisonous gas, as the small lungs of the songbird would be even more sensitive to pollution than that of the miners. Today, students need to think critically about environmental issues and the impact of human  interaction.

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