The pileated woodpecker lives, as has been said, almost entirely within the forest cover. Its flight is commonly a matter of gliding and of slow-measured flapping through the trees. Its appearance then is unmistakable—large and black, with a flashing pattern of white beneath the wings, and a gleaming scarlet crest.
At times it rises above the treetops and moves over greater distances, and then its manner of flight bears greater likeness to the typical bounding or galloping flight of the generality of woodpeckers. Its outline against the sky is not unlike a kingfisher’s. Dr. Sutton (1930) describes an encounter in the Pennsylvania mountains with a bird that “cackled for about fifteen minutes, pounding intermittently on a tree trunk. It then rose in air, mounted to a plane above the tree-tops, and flew in direct course down the valley, uttering a single, loud, even-toned puck about every two seconds, as far as we could hear it. The bird was still flying high when it faded from view.”
Cornelius Weygandt (1912) described from Monroe County, Pa., the appearance of “the Logcock that in late July and early August made the sunset hour more memorable by its passing”:
It was on the evening of July 26 that we first saw him * * * we noticed a large bird flying heron-like toward us. He passed us and made his way onward toward a tall broken-topped gum tree that stood out black against the sunset. He “landed” on its side near the top, woodpecker fashion, and bobbed downtrunk backwards for several yards. The sky was mauve and gold and crimson, and the great bird loomed blacker and bigger than he really was, limned sharply against it. He had not dropped along like the smaller woodpeckers, but had kept on more steadily, very like a heron, with only slight risings and fallings. After a rest on the gum tree of some three minutes he flung himself into the air and dove down into the Buck Hill Gorge.
Vickers (1915) characterizes the bird’s flight as “powerful and straight-forward, his head and neck carrying his powerful beak like a spear * * * [the bird] large as a crow and with a certain short, sturdy, kingfisherlike aspect.”
In general conclusion it may be said that the pileated woodpecker has the habit and manner of a giant, forest-loving flicker.
Voice.—Throughout the greater part of the year the pileated woodpecker is a relatively silent bird, but during the nesting season drumming and calling are frequent. The usual call is a cackle, resembling that of the flicker, though louder and of more sonorous quality. The “song” of the white-breasted nuthatch so far resembles it in pitch and tempo that a nuthatch near at hand may, for an instant, suggest the woodpecker far away. The ka, ka, ka of the woodpecker’s cackle is variable in quality, in speed of iteration, and in continuity, and seems to be expressive, sometimes of alarm, sometimes of companionship, sometimes of contentment. Aretas A. Saunders (1935) has noted that often there is rise in pitch at the beginning of a rendition and a slight fall at the end; and Samuel Scoville, Jr. (1920), distinguishing this from the flicker’s similar call, has remarked on “a queer little quirk at the end.” When a pair of birds cackle in alternation, as commonly they do, a difference in pitch will be noted; but whether that be a constant sexual difference, or a matter of individuality merely, I cannot say.
In the nesting season the mated birds have another flickerlike wuck-a-wuck call that seems to be peculiarly associated with their conjugal relationship. They use it in courtship and when they relieve one another in attendance at the nest.
Dr. Sutton (1930) mentions yet another call and describes it as “whining notes, suggesting the mew of the yellow-bellied sapsucker.” But it is more than that. It is a loud cry, that resembles the scream of a hawk. It is commonly reiterated slowly in five or six repetitions. Unless one were to follow the sound and discover its source, he would hardly impute it to this bird. It too, I believe, is a call peculiar to the nesting season.
When the bird is in flight a slowly uttered puck, puck may sometimes be heard, and sometimes what for lack of a better term may be called a creaking of the moving wings.