It’s in Your Nature: The sapsucker
Don’t confuse the more common downy woodpecker with the sapsucker, the downy’s all white belly will make identification easier.
Look for the sapsucker’s sap wells in relatively neat rows on its favored trees, including bradford pears or on an apple tree like this one.
The yellow-bellied sapsucker is a rather reclusive and quiet woodpecker species. Even though sap is its favored food, it will feed at your suet feeders.(note the faint,yellowish feathers on the breast)
During your spring cleanup outside, while raking the last fallen leaves from around your trees, you see some suspicious looking “drill holes” in your Bradford pear and crabapple trees. Your thoughts take you to the possibility that some neighbors were playing “games” with their portable drills to taunt you a bit. Not so. What you probably discovered were the “sap wells” of a yellow-bellied sapsucker.
If you are a baby boomer you may remember the weekly show called the “Beverly Hillbillies.” One of the lead characters was Miss Hathaway, who had a penchant for bird watching and referenced this same bird. Some probably assumed the yellow-bellied sapsucker was a fictional name. They are real, however, and can be observed locally.
They are a type of woodpecker that breeds mostly to our north. They are more common here a few months in fall and again for a few months in spring as they pause to feed here in their migration. They do, as the name implies, feed on sap. They also eat the small insects attracted to the dripping sap at the sap wells. Their favorite trees are the trees with sugar concentrations highest in their sap: Hickory, sugar maple, paper and yellow birch, apple trees, etc.
They fly to a tree trunk and generally drill eight or 10 holes, often in two or three rows. Then they usually move on to another tree or another spot on the trunk, and repeat the process. They then return to the first set of sap wells to eat the sap and any insects. They are not as vocal as a downy, red-bellied or pileated woodpecker. Even their drilling is done much quieter. It may be hard to hear them drilling the sap wells from as close as 20 or 30 feet.
The yellow-bellied sapsucker’s name is a bit misleading. If you were expecting to see a belly as bright as the goldfinch, you would be disappointed. The breast area shows a bit of a yellowish wash.
As other woodpeckers, the sapsuckers nest in cavities excavated in dead or dying trees (often underneath an old limb attachment). The cavity could be about 10 inches deep with no nesting materials, save for the wood chips left from the drilling process. Four or five eggs are placed in the nest, and after about 45 days of incubation and feeding, the young head out on their own.
If you use suet feeders to feed and attract birds, look for sapsuckers from September through November and again from late February until May. Birding buddy Dave and I have successfully “called them in” by repeatedly playing a recording of a screech owl. They, like many other bird species, fly in to investigate one of the predators they fear.
If you do quite a bit of outdoor snooping, look for their drill holes or listen intently for their rather quiet tapping. In more urban areas you can often find them, or their sap wells, on Bradford pears, a favorite ornamental tree for homeowners and city planners.
Test your knowledge: Stick tights, burdock and beggarticks all stick to your clothing or animal fur when you/animals contact them. Why do they have this adaptation?
Last week’s trivia answer: There indeed is “such a critter” as a snipe. We can find common snipes in the Times News coverage area.
Outdoor hints: Begin looking for the white-flower-covered trees soon to bloom throughout forested hillsides. These trees are not dogwoods however. These early bloomers are trees known by three different names: Shadbush, service berry or June berry. Dogwoods have rather large white flowers and bloom later when most of the other trees have already leafed out.
Contact Barry Reed at breed71@gmail.com.
