A person who has had great success in getting piliated woodpeckers to come to feeders was Kenny Short of Bainbridge Island. He died about a year ago. He is well known to old-time Seattle Audubon Society members, at least. I'm a relative newcomer to the area, but fortunately I have been to Kenny Short's home twice. While there I've seen some of his feeders and have seen piliated woodpeckers at them . Kenny Short's theory was that the feeders needed to be treelike (fits with your observations as to where you usually see those birds). He made his woodpecker feeders from cylindrical sections of logs. He might have one about one-and-a-half to two feet long. He would drill approximately one-inch diameter holes radially inward around the piece from one to six inches from one end. That end would be the top end of the feeder which he would hang from a tree branch or from a horizontal wire, etc. The hole had to be far enough up from the bottom end so that the woodpecker had enough room to perch in the usual way with its tail doing the bracing from below. Kenny Short found that it wasn't necessary to have bark on the piece of log. The cylindrical shape seemed to be the essential attribute of the feeder. Of course the holes had to be stuffed with suet or some suitable food. Kenny used a mixture of lard and oatmeal.

I hope this information will be helpful to you.

Richard Huggett, Redmond, WA (formerly of Baton Rouge, LA)
richardhuggett at earthlink.net
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