Woodpecker

The Mount Kalaga National Park screenshot with two hunters walking through the pines hides a second subject. Up and to the right, a dark bird clings vertically to a trunk in classic woodpecker posture, head up, tail braced against the bark. It is a handful of pixels in the full frame, which is why it took forum frame-hunters a while to flag it, but the silhouette is hard to read as anything else.

Rockstar has not named the species. The community call is pileated, the big red-crested woodpecker that dominates Florida pinewoods, and that is the identification this page carries with the usual footnote: the sighting is official, the species is a reading.

Woodpeckers belong to the inland half of Leonida. Mount Kalaga’s longleaf pine, the cypress edges of Grassrivers and the oak hammocks around Ambrosia are all real-world woodpecker country, and with Game Informer putting the bird count above 60 it would be strange if only one species made the cut. Red-bellied and downy woodpeckers are the obvious extras.

Listen before you look. In the real Florida woods the drumming carries further than the bird is visible, and if Rockstar’s ambient audio is as layered as the Extended Look suggested, the same trick should work in game.