Grand pic— Quebec wildlife

The pileated woodpecker ( PY-lee-ay-tid, PIL-ee-; Dryocopus pileatus) is a large, crow-sized woodpecker with a prominent red crest, white neck stripe, and a mostly black body. This woodpecker is native to North America, where it is the largest confirmed extant woodpecker species and the third-largest extant species of woodpecker in the world, after the great slaty woodpecker and the black woodpecker. It inhabits deciduous forests in eastern North America, the Great Lakes, the boreal forests of Canada, and parts of the Pacific Coast. This woodpecker is primarily an insectivore, eating insects that live in trees; it is famous for making large, nearly rectangular carvings into trees, which are used to extract prey inside the tree or to make a nest. The species has a large range and an increasing population, causing it to be categorized as a species of "least concern" by the IUCN.

Description

Pileated woodpeckers are mainly black with a red crest and have a white line down the sides of the throat. Adult males have a red line from the bill to the throat; in adult females, these are black. They also have white wing feathers that show when in flight. Adults are 40 to 49 cm (16 to 19 in) long, span 66 to 75 cm (26 to 30 in) across the wings, and weigh 225 to 400 g (7.9 to 14.1 oz). The average weight of females and males combined is about 277 g (9.8 oz), with males weighing about 300 g (11 oz) and females weighing about 256 g (9.0 oz) in mean body mass. The wing chord measures 21.4 to 25.3 cm (8.4 to 10.0 in), the tail measures 14.0 to 17.4 cm (5.5 to 6.9 in), the bill is 4.1 to 6.0 cm (1.6 to 2.4 in), and the tarsus measures 3.1 to 3.8 cm (1.2 to 1.5 in). Southern pileated woodpeckers have ebony feathers, less white on the feathers by the wings, and are smaller in overall size compared to their northern counterparts. Northern pileated woodpeckers are larger in wing, tail, and beak size. They also have feathers that are a lighter black with tinges of brown and gray and whiter feathers on their flanks. Juvenile pileated woodpeckers tend to have less curved crests, or "mohawks" as some refer to them. The flight of these birds is strong and direct, but undulates in the way characteristic of woodpeckers. Two species found in the Old World, the white-bellied woodpecker (D. javensis) and black woodpeckers (D. martius), are closely related and occupy the same ecological niche in their respective ranges that the pileated occupies in North America. The only North American birds of similar plumage and size are the (likely extinct) ivory-billed woodpecker of the Southeastern United States and Cuba and the related imperial woodpecker of Mexico.