The temple of truth has never suffered so much from woodpeckers on the outside as from termites within.

~Vance Havner

Melissa spotted a pair of pileated woodpeckers out front the other day and we grabbed the scope to take a closer look. They were both pounding on a couple of hickory stumps that we had used several years ago as legs for our campfire ring benches. When they started to decay, I rolled most of them out the side gate where they have served as home for countless critters and as a food source for the woodpeckers. I rolled two into the patch of trees out a front window so we could hopefully see woodpeckers doing just what we watched this week – hammering away looking for bugs. Melissa is much better at hand-holding a phone up to a scope for video so she recorded a few segments of the woodpeckers searching for food.

–A female pileated woodpecker hammering at a rotting stump looking for a meal

I slowed the next clip down so you can see the bird’s tongue flicking in and out as it chipped wood away. As we watched, we occasionally saw termites crawl out of the holes made by the woodpecker so we assume that was the main food it was gathering from this effort.

–Male pileated woodpecker shown chipping away at a rotten stump in slow motion