Nice shot, thanks. Lucky you.

tj

Beautiful bird, great shot!

Debra

Implication is the tree is being killed by bugs it can hear inside of it. (Maybe emerald ash borer for instance). Or perhaps it was checking to see if there were any.

Either way if the tree is going to start falling apart you won't of course want it near your house.

Maybe you already knew about this but I see it really is a "guy":

Pileated Woodpecker male and female (pugetsoundbackyardbirds.com)

Thanks Embothrium. We have dead ash trees all over our property, sadly. We have about 33 acres, so there's lots of them. And we have tons of ash saplings and are just hoping some predator shows up that can eat the borers. Fortunately, this particular ash in the picture seems to be dying a lot more slowly than the others. But thanks for the heads-up! I did have to look up the diff between male and female, I did notice the red "mustache" in the male, but missed the difference in their heads, so thanks for that link too!

Not the only species where males and females may appear to have different heads.

Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus: The Classic Guide to Understanding the Opposite Sex: Gray, John: 9780060574215: Amazon.com: Books

One of those chopped up a bay-window frame on my place in VA years ago. Had to replace that part of the bay-window. Fighting his reflection.....

I can sort of relate, bengz.....we have carpenter bees around here and they have made tons of holes in our soffits (?). Then all the various woodpeckers go after their eggs, making the holes much bigger. We'll need to replace it all someday so they can start all over again. I wonder if your pileated was after bugs/larva?? We live in the woods, so hopefully they can find big trees to peck on. But the carpenter bees eat holes in the posts around our fences and garden too. Oh well..........

catherinet, like some birds do, it was a male attacking his dang reflection in the glass during mating season....