If you get bad news about one of your trees, kindly don't blame the messenger. Even if — especially if — they vandalize that very tree. It could save a lot of trouble, and possibly your life, to heed their memo.Although it's captivating to watch a big prehistoric-looking woodpecker chisel away at a rotten snag in the forest, the same performance loses its charm when it jack-hammers a hole in your perfectly good tree. The thing is, no matter how healthy that tree may appear, it is definitely not sound,and may in fact be dangerous. Your "vandal" is alerting you to this truth by installing windows in the tree trunk.Native to the eastern United States, southeastern Canada and a belt of Canadian boreal forest stretching to the Pacific coast, the pileated woodpecker (Dryocopus pileatus) is easy to recognize. Its prominent red crest is an attention-getter, but its size sets it apart as well. Assuming the ivory-billed woodpecker is extinct, our pileated is the largest in North America, at 40-49 cm long, with a 66-75 cm wingspan.
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