I’m looking forward to returning to Louisiana at the end of the month and have high hopes that our trail cams will reveal just what’s removing bark from the trees in our search area.
In the meantime, I thought I’d compile a new group of links to images showing bark scaling (without accompanying excavation) done or suspected to have been done by Pileated Woodpeckers. Obviously long dead snags are excluded. Compare these images with the work we suspect to have been done by ivorybills, all on live or freshly dead wood. As discussed in this and other posts, it’s our hypothesis that the differences are anatomically determined.
And another (scroll down).
Apparently a long dead snag, suspected PIWO, note small chips on the ground and the way they appear to have been flaked rather than pried off.
I suspect the work from Congaree shown on this Cornell Mobile Search Team page is Pileated. As the commentary indicates, it’s somewhat consistent with what would be expected for IBWO, but it’s patchy and not extensive:
A couple of additional examples.
This appears to be a softwood. (Our diagnostic criteria include only hardwoods). Even so, note the layered appearance:
Another softwood, also showing the tendency to flake bark off in layers rather than knock off large chunks:
Another pine.
Small hardwood.
Hard to tell the age of this snag, but note the layered appearance on the right. The apparently stripped limb in the foreground appears to be long dead: