Three-toed woodpecker found during Aroostook bird hunt

A group of Audubon folks went to Aroostook County to find birds of the northern forest, especially those that are hard to find in the Bangor area.

We were fortunate to have the help of expert birder Bill Sheehan, who lives in The County and knows many good places to look for the northern birds we sought. We looked all morning for the three-toed woodpecker, the hardest of all to find.

It scales the thin bark off dead spruce and tamarack trees to find and eat insects underneath. We were looking through a large stand of dead trees, and listening for the soft taps as the bird looked for food.

Other, more common woodpeckers tap by stabbing hard with the bill into the wood. The one we sought taps sideways just under the bark, not directly into the wood. The noise of its tapping is softer.

Other woodpeckers have four toes, an adaptation for gripping the tree hard and bracing as they hack away at the wood. This one has three toes; the fourth is not needed for hard gripping as it scales the bark away.

We looked and listened all morning for the rare woodpecker. We didn’t find it, but Sheehan found boreal chickadees.

“Boreal” means northern. Related to our familiar black-capped chickadees, boreal chickadees have brown caps and call a raspy “chick-a-day-day-day.” They disappeared before most people saw them.

Our guide also found boreal relatives of our familiar blue jay. A family of gray jays flew toward us, and everybody got wonderful, long looks.

We took an hour break from the midday heat, then started out for other birds – Virginia and sora rails and upland sandpiper. The rails were in a cat-tail marsh and ran across the water in full view of the thrilled birders. The upland sandpiper was in an enormous field near the old Loring Airport runway. For some birders these were also “life birds,” species seen for the first time in their lives.

Before dinner, Sheehan said, “Let’s give that three-toed woodpecker one more time.” Back we went to the dead trees, searching and listening.

We heard a woodpecker drumming! The tapping was fast, and tapered off at the end – just the rhythm of the three-toed woodpecker.

We walked quickly and quietly down a logging road toward the sound. Drumming is the woodpecker’s message to others of its own species: to the male, “this is my territory – keep off,” and to a female, “this is a good place to live and find a mate – me.”

At last we found it! The size of a hairy woodpecker, it had yellow on its head, a nearly all-black head and wings, with a narrow “ladder” of white down its back. We watched it for 20 minutes, scaling bark, hitching up trees, flying down to another tree, hitching up again, scaling bark some more. What a treat.

I had tried to find this bird, not intensely, but on and off for more than 20 years. It was a “life bird” for me, and for all the other birders in the group, except of course for Sheehan, who has been finding that bird for years in The County. Thank you, Bill Sheehan!

Now I’ve seen all the woodpeckers in the United States, except the ivory-billed. Should I hope to see that one some day?

For information on Fields Pond Audubon Center, call 989-2591.