Tag Archives | Red-breasted Sapsucker

Sapsuckers!

By Larry Jordan on January 20, 2024 in Birds

Yellow-bellied Sapsucker

There are about 200 species of woodpecker in the world. Twenty-three of those species are native to the United States, but only three are designated “sapsuckers.” These three were originally treated as forms of one species, the Yellow-bellied Sapsucker. In 1983 they were split into separate species. Lucky for us, even though the Yellow-bellied Sapsucker is an eastern bird, we occasionally find them here in Shasta County. This bird was found at Lema Ranch, one of our local birding hotspots. Note the two different types of holes in the bark. The large, rectangular wells must be continually maintained for sap to flow and the bird licks the sap from the hole.

The smaller round holes placed in horizontal rows are probed by the bird inserting it’s beak to retrieve the sap. This Red-breasted Sapsucker probing these small holes with its beak is probably the most often seen here in the northstate.

This Red-breasted Sapsucker was working on the largest trunk of a lilac bush in our yard.

The Red-naped Sapsucker can be a bit harder to find as they don’t have a large presence in California, even though they nest in the far northeastern corner of the state and we found this one nesting in Lassen National Park. This sapsucker has a black stripe along the side of his head, bordered by 2 white stripes and a red nape.

Unlike the Red-breasted Sapsucker, the male Red-naped Sapsucker sports a red neck over a black bib. The female chin and upper throat may be white and lower throat red.

Confusing some folks not familiar with the Williamson’s Sapsucker is the fact that the male and female look like different species. The male is very distinctive with white wing coverts and rump. Two white stripes on the face, one above and one below the eye, contrasting strongly with iridescent black upperparts, head, and breast with a red patch on the chin and upper throat, and a yellow belly.

With a fleeting glimpse the female has been mistaken for a Northern Flicker. She has a brownish head, with heavily barred wings, flanks, and upperparts of white, brown, and black as well as a yellow belly and white rump. This is the female bringing insects to the nest.

Sapsuckers don’t only feed on sap, they also consume berries and large numbers of ants and other insects, especially once young hatch. This is a shot of the nestling.

Also, sapsuckers aren’t the only birds that feed from sap wells …

A pair of yellow-bellied sapsuckers collecting insects at sap wells to feed their young.

A Thanksgiving Celebration of the part of the bird we don’t eat

By Larry Jordan on November 24, 2018 in BirdWords

Peregrine Falcon

Bill, neb, schnoz – whatever it’s called, a bird’s beak is its second most important appendage after its wings. Since birds’ upper limbs are devoted to flight, the beak is vitally important in manipulating objects for feeding and nest building. Although some species are able to use feet for those purposes, many rely entirely on their bills.

The upper and lower mandibles comprising the beak are bony structures covered with keratin, a substance similar to human fingernails – and also similarly, constantly growing. The keratin layer may be very rigid and powerful as in the woodpeckers, whose beaks can drill nest holes or tease out insects in hardwood trees. In some species such as puffins and White Pelicans, the keratin forms projections during breeding season, presumably to enhance their attractiveness to prospective mates. These ornaments are shed after nesting time.

Icthyornis dispar

So, how did the toothed jaws of ancestral dinosaurs become transformed into modern beaks? A strong hint is offered by the recently reconstructed fossils of an ancient sea bird, Icthyornis dispar, that lived alongside dinosaurs 87 to 82 million years ago. Although it had dinosaur-like teeth, its long, narrow jaw was tipped by a tiny beak that it could have used like tweezers to grasp objects. The scientist that led the effort to reconstruct this bird said that it pecked like a bird, but bit like a dinosaur.

Red-breasted Sapsucker

Over the millennia since then, adaptation to many different foods and environments has led to the vast variety of bills seen in modern birds. Form follows function, and so we have finch and sparrow beaks that act as crackers for seed-opening; eagles with shredders to tear apart meat; woodpeckers with chisels to bore into wood for insects; hummingbird probes used to reach into flowers for nectar; heron and kingfisher spears for skewering fish or frogs; and the warblers’ tweezers for grabbing insects. Not all birds have beaks specialized for a single purpose – the omnivorous crow has a versatile beak that all by itself can be likened to a Swiss army knife.

American Crow photo courtesy of Ingrid Taylar

Most birds have little or no sense of smell, but there are notable exceptions. Vultures find the carrion they eat by odor – a characteristic taken advantage of by oil pipeline companies. By including a decay molecule in the crude oil, oil companies attract a cloud of vultures to leaks. The vultures, in turn, are followed by pipeline tenders with repair equipment. At sea, the tables are turned. Some seabirds can follow an odor plume to locate dead fish – and in this case the birds take advantage of the humans to detect fishing boats and their discards.

Generally, nostrils are on the part of birds’ beaks close to the head. However, New Zealand’s distinctive kiwi has nostrils near the tip of the beak where its well-developed sense of smell helps it find the insects and earthworms that it eats in the leaf litter.

Kiwi

The flamingo feeds in a manner as distinctive as its tropical appearance. It partially submerges its beak in prey-rich water, holding it upside down so that the upper mandible is below the lower mandible. It draws in large amounts of water and sieves out small organisms by means of hair-like projections on its beak. Thus, it is a filter-feeder, a characteristic it shares with baleen whales and oysters!

American Flamingo

Our familiar hummingbirds have tropical cousins with amazingly long or fantastically curved beaks that match the corolla tubes of the flowers they feed from. Scientists who study them think that they are partnered in an “arms race” against other flowers and birds. As the flower and the hummingbird team becomes increasingly matched to just each other, they become physiologically committed to just their unique flower-bird relationship, and they exclude other species from their activity. It is as if they are in a long process of being wedded to each other.

Anna’s Hummingbird

You don’t have to travel to exotic places or visit zoos to see these amazing beaks in action. Notice the different ways the house finches and the nuthatches that visit your feeders get into the seeds that they eat. Look at the bills of the birds in your yard – do they look like tweezers, probes or chisels? Then watch and see how the bird uses its beak. This makes another way to enjoy the birds around us.

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Tag Archives | Red-breasted Sapsucker