Pileated Woodpecker song and call

A Pileated Woodpecker sounds like a wild, ringing laugh from deep in the woods: a loud cuk-cuk-cuk-cuk-cuk series that rises in pitch and then falls away, often described as maniacal. It is flicker-like but far louder and more resonant. The single alarm note is a sharp cuk, and courting birds give a softer woick. The drum is slow and deep, a rolling burst of about three seconds on a hollow tree that sounds like someone swinging a hammer. Listen in mature forest across the East, the North and the Pacific Northwest, all year round.

What the song sounds like: the laugh

The Pileated's main call is a long series of loud cuk notes, delivered fast, that climbs in pitch through the middle and drops at the end. It has real volume: this is a crow-sized bird with a big chest, and the call rings through a forest the way a Northern Flicker's never quite does. The Missouri Department of Conservation compares it to maniacal laughter, which is fair. Once you have heard one, the flicker's flatter, thinner wick-wick-wick is easy to separate.

Pairs use the loud call and drumming together to defend a territory, and the noise picks up in late winter and early spring during courtship. The rest of the year a Pileated can be surprisingly quiet, and you may find it by the sound of wood chips hitting the ground before you hear a note.

The call: cuk and woick

A single sharp cuk, sometimes a few in a row, is the alarm, given when the bird spots a hawk or a person. Courting birds exchange a softer woick. Fights between rivals are loud affairs with chasing, calling, wing strikes and bill jabs. In flight the bird is mostly silent, and its slow, strong, slightly rising-and-falling wingbeats and flashing white underwings do the talking.

When and where you hear it

Pileated Woodpeckers are permanent residents from Nova Scotia and southern Canada south through the eastern United States to Florida and east Texas, and in the West along the Pacific coast and the northern Rockies. They are absent from the Southwest and the open Plains. They do not migrate, though individuals sometimes wander, and a pair stays on its territory all year, so the laugh can come on a January morning as easily as in May.

The habitat is big trees: mature deciduous or mixed forest, conifer forest in the West, southern swamps and old Douglas-fir stands, plus second-growth woods and fragmented woodlots as long as some large trunks and dead snags remain. The diet is mostly insects, and carpenter ants can be 60 percent of it, with termites, wood-boring beetle larvae, fruit and nuts behind them. The bird gets at the ants by chiseling into dead wood, leaving the rectangular holes that are its calling card, and lapping them out of the galleries with a long, barbed, sticky tongue. It also works fallen logs, especially after a fire.

The nest is a new cavity each year, dug by both birds in a dead tree or limb, usually 15 to 80 feet up, unlined except for chips. The female lays three to five white eggs; both parents incubate, the male at night, and the young fledge after about four weeks and stay with the family for two or three more months. Old nest holes become roosts, some with several entrances, and are used afterward by owls, ducks and squirrels. Forest clearing in the 1700s and 1800s drove the Pileated out of much of its range; since about 1900 it has come back steadily, and there are now roughly 2.6 million. In Warble it is one of the prized woodland cards in every eastern album.

The drum

Where a Downy's drum is a quick patter, the Pileated's is a slow, deep roll that lasts about three seconds and carries a long way. Missouri's field guide compares it to a banging hammer. The bird picks a hollow tree or a dead snag for the most resonance, drums most in the morning, and drums more often in late winter and early spring when pairs are forming and territories are being set. A short burst of drumming together with the loud call is the Pileated's equivalent of a song.

What it looks like

The largest woodpecker in the United States now that the Ivory-billed is gone: 16 to 19 inches long with a wingspan of 26 to 29 inches, about the size of a crow. The body is black, with a flaming red crest, a white stripe running from the bill down the side of the neck, and a face striped black and white. In flight, big white patches under the wings flash with every beat. The male has a red forehead and a red mustache stripe; on the female both are black. The bill is long and chisel-shaped.

Woody Woodpecker's look is generally credited to this bird, though his laugh is said to be borrowed from the Acorn Woodpecker. Pileateds cling to vertical trunks and are awkward on thin branches, so a large black-and-white bird hitching up a big trunk, throwing chips, is a good sign you have found one.

Birds that sound similar

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  Northern Flicker

  The Northern Flicker's wick-wick-wick is the classic confusion: a similar fast laugh, but thinner, flatter and without the Pileated's ringing depth, and it holds one pitch instead of rising and falling.

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  Red-bellied Woodpecker

  A Red-bellied Woodpecker's chuck-chuck-chuck is a short descending series with a rolling churr mixed in. The Pileated's series is longer, louder and deeper, and no churr follows it.

Where the Pileated Woodpecker card lives

In Warble the same bird can be an easy card in one state and a prized one in another, because each album ranks its birds by how often people really report them there. The Pileated Woodpecker appears in 33 state albums:

Questions people ask

Written by the Warble team from the sources above. Updated September 30, 2026.