I have seen pileated woodpeckers eating fruit and seeds fairly often. In Maryland I once saw 2 downy, 1 red-bellied, and 2 (!) pileated woodpeckers all together feasting on the abundant fruits on an enormous poison ivy vine…
Sent from my iPhone
> On Nov 20, 2024, at 9:44 PM, Maeve Kim <maevekim7...> wrote:
>
> We watched a pileated yesterday, also foraging among dry leaves. We weren’t really close to it, but through the binoculars, it appeared to be picking individual wild grapes from the vine that was draped around the tree. I had no idea they ate fruit, but Cornell says:
> The Pileated Woodpecker’s primary food is carpenter ants, supplemented by other ants, woodboring beetle larvae, termites, and other insects such as flies, spruce budworm, caterpillars, cockroaches, and grasshoppers. They also eat wild fruits and nuts, including greenbrier, hackberry, sassafrass, blackberries, sumac berries, poison ivy, holly, dogwood, persimmon, and elderberry.
>
> Maeve Kim, Jericho Center
>
>> On Nov 20, 2024, at 3:14 PM, Sue Gilbert <suewgilbert...> wrote:
>>
>> This morning I spent several minutes watching a pileated woodpecker in my birch tree, not pecking on the trunk or bark, but rather foraging amongst all the dry seeds hanging off the branches. The seeds that I could reach, I inspected for insects, thinking that's what the woodpecker was eating. But there were none. Does anyone know if Pileated Woodpeckers actually eat the birch seeds?
