Yellow Bellied Sapsucker
Yellow Bellied Sapsucker
Range and Habitat:
The yellow bellied sapsucker summer breeding range extends from central Canada to Newfoundland, south to British Columbia, North Dakota, Missouri, and central New England, and the mountains to North Carolina. From late March through September, they can be seen in new forests from southeastern Alaska over Canada and the northeastern United States with smaller, more localized breeding populations living in the Appalachians as far south as Tennessee. In winter months, the yellow bellied sapsucker migrates, leaving their summer range. In the fall all Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers migrate to the southeastern United States, Mexico, Central America, or the West Indies for the winter. The species has happened as a very rare occurrence in Ireland and Great Britain.
Their habitat is most often new, open deciduous or mixed woodlands with clearings and while on migration, they visit parks, yards, and urban gardens. The yellow-bellied sapsucker is most abundant along streams in mixed hardwood conifer woodlands. They are also found in ponderosa pine, aspen, mixed coniferous trees, lodgepole pine, and in mixed stands of fir-larch-pine.
Food:
Like other sapsuckers, this birds bore holes in trees and eat sap and insects. They may also cull insects from tree trunks or capture them in flight. They eat fruit and berries in addition to insects and sap. Sapsuckers are discriminating in using particular trees over others, and they commit a lot of time in managing trees for both current and later use. They are known to eat off as many as 1,000 various species of trees, though they show a predilection for particular species within a given area. Birches, sugar maples, and scotch pines are a a couple of primary favorites. They frequently will choose single trees that are injured or weakened, such as from insects, disease, lightning or wind. The cause for this may be that the the sap of trees in poor health has higher degrees of amino acids and protein.
At Your Bird Feeders
Yellow-bellied sapsuckers feed fruit and insects as well as sap. They can sometimes be enticed to backyard bird feeder stations which provide suet or fruit bird foods.
Nesting:
Their breeding habitat is wooded areas across Canada, eastern Alaska and the northeastern United States. They favor young, principally deciduous forests. There is also an isolated population found in high elevations of the Appalachian Mountains in Virginia, Tennessee, and North Carolina. They nest in a large cavity hollowed in a deciduous tree, often choosing one weakened by disease with the same location potentially be used for several years. t takes one to four weeks of excavating to build a nest site, which is lined with sawdust and wood chips. One egg per day is laid until there are between 2 and 7 eggs. Most often this birds will mate with the same partner year after year as long as both birds live. They occasionally crossbreed with Red-naped Sapsuckers or Red-breasted Sapsuckers where their breeding ranges overlap. Nesting consists of 5 or 6 white eggs in a tree cavity hollowed by the birds. The male sapsucker picks out the breeding territory, selects the nest site, and does the majority of the nest cavity excavation, they also assist equally in the incubation of the growing eggs and nestlings and manage most of the nest cleanup. They also do a large amount of feeding the young. Male sapsuckers are more apt to succeed at single parenting. If one parent dies when young are in the nest, the babies are more probable to survive to fledgling if raised by the male.
After two weeks of incubation, the baby woodpeckers hatch and almost at once begin their constant, raucous vocalizations that can be heard 100 yards or further. The harried parents quench the nestling’s insatiable hunger with insects dipped in sap. Three to four long weeks later, the young are physically prepared to depart the nest, however they are sometimes loath to do so. In such circumstances , parent sapsuckers have been seen luring the young fledglings by dangling food just out of their reach. House and box height placement from ground in feet: 10-20.
Pretty Pictures
This photo of a male and female yellow bellied sapsucker is from mon@rch nature blog. Please visit him at his blog and also his flickr photography gallery for some absolutely beautiful nature photos. His photography of yellow bellied sapsuckers, which includes the larger version of the photo we show, is located in his blog post Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers in Allegany State Park. There are several more (dare we say again, beautiful??) shots of these birds there which are far better than the single sample we have displayed.