Arthur T. Wayne (1910) says that in South Carolina “this fine species is abundant wherever the forest is of a primeval nature, but where the heavy growth has been cut away it is seldom met with.” Wright and Harper (1913), writing of its haunts in southern Georgia, say: “With the exception of the red-bellied woodpecker, this is the most abundant member of its family in the Okefinokee. In fact, we saw as many as four Pileated Woodpeckers in a single tree. In every part of the swamp--especially the cypress bays, but also the hammocks and the piny woods on the islands, and even the ‘heads’ on the prairies--these magnificent birds are at home.” George Finlay Simmons (1925) says that in the Austin region of Texas this woodpecker lives in the “wilder country only; cypress swamps, and the most heavily timbered bottomlands, generally in very thinly settled sections; post oak woods on gravelly river terraces; edges of woodland meadows; along margins of both large and small streams; Austroriparian forests; in or near edges of timber, venturing out onto fields to feed.” Charles R. Stockard (1904) says of his experience with this species in Mississippi: During three seasons seventeen nests were watched in Adams County. In the vicinity where observations were made every small woods had its pair of these large woodpeckers. The individuals of this species seemed to occupy very small feeding areas. Of the seven nests that were found in 1902 five pairs of the birds were located in their respective woods during the previous December and January. Whenever a pair was once seen feeding in a wood during the winter the same pair could always be found very close to that place. At the beginning of the nesting season they would invariably make their burrow in some dead but sound tree near the edge of the brake. From continued observation it appeared certain that whenever a pair were found in a small wood during the winter they were sure to nest there the following spring. * * * In four instances, all of which had lost their eggs the year before, the birds built their new burrows in their several woods within a distance of about one quarter of a mile from the previous nest site. These four are the only cases which were watched with special care.