I still get chills looking at my pileated woodpecker shots. This guy (red crown AND ‘moustache’ identifies the guys, the gals don’t have moustaches, of course). This shot is from the second to last in my set as I was directly tip-toeing toward him, perhaps fifteen to twenty feet away. He had registered something was wrong and he bailed micro-seconds after this shot. I am guessing that he is looking right at me here; he was at my height but the tree is on a downward slope, so he was about ten feet up in the tree.
This tree is in Sherry’s Mom’s side yard. He arrived just as I pulled into the driveway; I had to scramble to switch to my tele-photo lens, then walk about thirty feet toward him without spooking him.
The pronouncement of ‘pileated’ is controversial. Outside New England, it is more commonly pronounced “PIE-lee-ated” while I have been used to “PILL-lee-ated”. My Audubon of Eastern Birds doesn’t give a pronunciation guide.
We have started to turn colors in the back woods. A very dry month of September disappeared in a day as five or six inches of rain fell on the last day of the month. For the record, a typical month of rain is about four inches. 