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Pileated Update



As some of you had seen some of my photos from the pileated nest, I
tough you may also be interested in getting an update.

My first trip to see the woodpeckers was on Thu May 15th, this is the
day I took the pictures that I posted. I also printed two of these and
gave them to Cynthia Fox at the Wild Bird Center in Chapel Hill, she
posted them near the cash register for people to see.

The pictures that I took, only show two chicks, and both females.
However there were 3 chicks, one male and 2 female. Rick Albretch was
furtunate enough to have captured all 3 chicks on one of his trips to
photograph them. He has also given 2 prints to Cynthia and they are
posted there as well.

Over the next few days I visited about 6 times and was able to see the
male and female feeding the young. Progressively the chicks got
aggresive with the parent and seemed eager to get out on their own.
However we had some pretty heavy overcast days, and there was not enough
light really to take any other good pictures.

I went to visit again last evening (Mon May 19th) and I spent about 1.5
hours with Dawn (the one who alerted us to this great find) and we
watched the chicks and parents for quite a while.

What was very interesting about this evening is that while we saw the
male come a feed the chicks once or twice, when the female came the
chicks retreated back into the nest and kept very quiet. Then the male
and female proceeded to have a pretty spririted series of "fights" where
they tumbled down from the surrounding trees and they seemed to peck and
grab at each other. We observed this happening 3 times. From this point
on the chicks never came out again that evening.

This morning I went over with the promise of more light to take some
more photos, but the chicks where gone. It seems that they all fledged
very eary this morning. I heard them in the distance on a few ocassions.

Interestingly, I saw a pair of c. wrens going in and out of the pileated
nest... seems that they were scoping out a new nest site.

Hope you found this update of interest.

-J

--
Juan A. Pons
jpons@wildnaturephoto.com
http://www.wildnaturephoto.com/
Pittsboro, NC