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A big, dashing bird with a flaming crest, the Pileated Woodpecker is the largest extant woodpecker in North America. Excavating deep into rotten wood to get at the nests of carpenter ants, the Pileated Woodpecker leaves characteristic rectangular holes in dead trees. This species became rare in eastern North America with the clearing of forests in centuries past, but has gradually increased in numbers again since about the beginning of the 20th century. Where unmolested, it even lives in parks and woodlots around the edges of large cities.