This time of year, wildlife is abundant as many animals are busy preparing for the coming summer season. As is the case with many creatures, this means building a nest in order to raise their young. Today at Grand Portage State Park (which is where I work for my day job) my co-workers told me about a large bird that they had seen climbing out of a hole in a tree. Based on their description I told them it was probably a Pileated Woodpecker. They showed me where they had seen it and sure enough, that's what it was. He was diligently working all afternoon on carving out a nest cavity in a tall aspen tree. When we first got to the tree the bird was nowhere to be seen, but we could hear a muted tapping sound. After a few moments the woodpecker stuck his head out of the hole and promptly threw a mouthful of wood chips to the ground. We watched him do this over and over again.
I knew I had to get some footage of this activity, so after work I went back to the nest and he was still hard at work, tapping inside the tree then throwing the wood chips out. I watched and photographed him for about an hour. Hopefully this means that they will be having babies soon and we will be able to see them being fed by the parents. This is an easily accessible location at the park so it would be neat to share this wildlife encounter with park visitors :-)
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