Hi everyone,

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I just got to witness an interesting, and amusing, slice of daily Pileated Woodpecker (PIWO)?life with youngsters.? We have one small suet feeder hanging on a pole about fifteen feet from our kitchen window, and two suet feeders on a Doug Fir about fifty feet away.? Usually the PIWO's work the ones on the Doug Fir, as one of them is larger, and there is a lot more vegetation around them, so it probably feels more 'natural'.? So just a few minutes ago, an adult PIWO landed on the close feeder and proceeded to gorge on the suet.? That wasn't unusual, but then THREE youngsters flew in as well.? The youngsters, like so many young birds, were so klutzy and clueless that you wonder how any of them survive to adulthood (and of course, lots of?young birds?don't).? One, figuring that emulating parents yields good results, kept trying to land and feed by the adult,?but the suet feeder only was big enough for one bird, and the youngster kept trying to land on the pole baffle, which of course didn't work.? The other two young ones circled the adult a couple times but then went and landed on the Doug Fir with the other suet feeders.? Yet they did not feed on them - maybe this was a batch of young that hadn't been to the yard before...?? They were above the feeders on the tree and appeared to be waiting to get fed.? Sure enough, the adult (I confess to not noticing its gender in the excitement of seeing all four of the birds moving about) then went to the tree and I assumed all the youngsters would get fed.? Not so!? The first one to beg was unceremoniously pecked at and approached aggressively by the adult, with the clear message being 'you ain't gettin' fed, junior!'? After multiple attempts with the same result, that youngster flew to another close-by tree.? Yet after having chased off youngster number 1, the adult then fed youngster number 2, multiple times.? Why feed one but chase the other...?? Number 1 was on a woodpecker 'timeout' for bad behavior?? The adult figured that one was now officially on its own before the other two, for reasons only discernible by the adult bird?? Or...?? Youngster number 3 was only an observer to the situation - it didn't beg, and so what the adult's reaction to it would have been can't be determined.? After a couple feedings of the 'favored' youngster, the adult flew off, followed by the young ones.?

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It certainly seemed like the adult had about had its fill of looking after three young ones, and was just about ready to boot all of them out to fend for themselves.? Perhaps the other parent, nowhere to be seen today, had already decided it was done with this child-rearing thing.? Bird parents don't deal with 'boomerang' children who return home after college or some time working, as human young?sometimes do.? In the bird world, when you're on your own, it's figure out how to make a living or die.? Since PIWO's have large territories, the three youngsters here will not only have to cope with finding all their own food shortly but eventually disperse and find a suitable?unoccupied territory to claim as their own.? It would certainly be interesting to understand how that dispersal process happens with satellite transmitters on the youngsters.

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John Tubbs

johntubbs at comcast.net

Snoqualmie, WA

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