SOUTHERN RED-BREASTED SAPSUCKER
HABITS
The above name was applied to this sapsucker by Dr. Joseph Grinnell (1901) and was characterized by him as smaller and paler than the northern race and with a maximum extent of white markings. It is evidently a well-marked race. But whether the red-breasted sapsucker should be considered a subspecies of the yellow-bellied sapsucker seems to me to be a decidedly open question, on which authorities seem to have differed, or to have changed their minds. In support of his views, Dr. Grinnell (1901) says: “I have examined a number of skins of the nuchalis type, and others approaching ruber in almost every degree, and I am certain that there is a continuous intergradation geographically between the eastern S. varius and ruber of the Pacific Coast. The intermediates do not appear to be the result of ‘hybridization’ and the case does not seem to be at all parallel to that of Colaptes auratus and C. cafer. Therefore I see no reason why the Red-breasted Sapsucker is of more than subspecific rank.”
It is interesting to note that Ridgway used the name Sphyrapicus varius ruber in 1872 and again in 1874 (Ridgway, 1914, in synonymy), but 40 years later (1914) he gave the red-breasted sapsucker full specific rank, apparently having changed his mind. And, in the same work, in a footnote under the red-naped sapsucker, referring to the intergrades mentioned by Dr. Grinnell, he says: “But they may be (and I believe are) hybrids; certainly there is no more reason for not considering them as such than in the case of Colaptes.”
Certainly the red-breasted sapsucker and the yellow-bellied sapsucker are as much unlike in appearance as the two flickers; and the hybrid flickers certainly show “every degree” of intergradation. In the large series of sapsuckers that I have examined, containing 87 typical ruber and 86 typical nuchalis, I was able to find only 8 specimens that could, by any stretch of the imagination, be considered as intermediates; I believe that these intergrading sapsuckers will prove to be relatively less common than are the hybrids between the two flickers.
It is interesting, too, to note that the first three editions of the A. O. U. Check-List, 1886, 1895, and 1910, all gave the red-breasted sapsucker full specific rank, in spite of the fact that Ridgway had called it a subspecies of the yellow-bellied in 1872, and Grinnell had done the same in 1901. But the fourth edition, 1931, adopts the subspecies theory, in spite of Ridgway’s latest decision.
The southern race of the red-breasted sapsucker breeds in the Canadian and Transition Zones in the mountains of California, from the Trinity and Warner Mountains southward to the San Jacinto Mountains. Grinnell and Storer (1924) say that it “is found in the main forest belt during the spring, summer, and fall, but regularly performs an altitudinal migration which carries it down into the tree growths of the western foothills and valleys for the winter months.”
Nesting.—Very little seems to have been published on the nesting habits of this sapsucker, which probably do not differ materially from those of its northern relative, about which more seems to be known. Wright M. Pierce (1916) located one of its nests in the San Bernardino Mountains, on June 26, of which he says: “The cavity was in the dead top of a large live silver fir about forty-five feet up. The cavity had a small opening and was only 5 or 6 inches deep; diameter, inside, 1½ or 2 inches. The nest held two large young and one smaller dead one. It was hard to see how more than one bird could survive in such a small space, so it was not surprising that the probably weaker bird had apparently been suffocated.”
Eggs.—The red-breasted sapsucker lays usually four or five eggs, sometimes as many as six. Like all woodpeckers’ eggs, they are pure white, usually with very little or no gloss, and they vary from ovate to rounded-ovate. The measurements of 13 eggs average 23.79 by 17.25 millimeters; the eggs showing the four extremes measure 24.6 by 17.0, 23.81 by 17.86, 22.5 by 17.5, and 24.5 by 16.6 millimeters.
Young.—Incubation is said to last about 14 days; this duty and the care of the young is shared by both parents. Mrs. Irene G. Wheelock (1904) says of a nest that she watched: “Incubation began May 30, and lasted fifteen days. The young were fed by regurgitation for the first two weeks. * * *
“The young sapsuckers left the nest on the seventh of July, and clung to the nest tree for three days. Here they were initiated by both parents into the mysteries of sap-sucking. A hole having been bored in front of each, with grotesque earnestness the mother watched the attempt to drink the sweet syrup. During this time both insects and berries were brought to them by the adults, in one hour one youngster devouring twelve insects that looked like dragonflies.”
Mrs. Florence M. Bailey (1902) writes:
The last week in July at Donner Lake we found a family of dull colored young going about with their mother, a handsome old bird with dark red head and breast. They flew around in a poplar grove for a while, and then gathered in a clump of willows, where four young clung to the branches and devoted themselves to eating sap. The old bird flew about among them and seemingly cut and scraped off the bark for them, at the same time apparently trying to teach them to eat the sap for themselves; for though she would feed them at other times she refused to feed them there, and apparently watched carefully to see if they knew enough to drink the sap. When the meal was finally over and the birds had flown, we examined the branch and found that lengthwise strips of bark had been cut off, leaving narrow strips like fiddle-strings between. At the freshly cut places the sap exuded as sweet as sugar, ready for the birds to suck.
Plumages.—Like other young sapsuckers, the young of this species are hatched naked, but the juvenal plumage is acquired before they leave the nest. In the juvenal plumage, in which the sexes are alike, the wings and tail are essentially as in the adult; the head and neck, except for the white stripe below the eye, are dark grayish sooty, though the forehead and crown are usually more or less tinged with dull red; the sides and flanks are more or less barred with dull gray and white; and the abdomen is dull yellowish white.
By the last of July, or first of August, the molt into the first winter plumage begins, with an increasing amount of red coming in on the crown, throat, and breast; at the same time the yellow of the abdomen becomes brighter. This molt continues through fall and is often not complete until November or later. The young bird is now much like the adult. In fall birds, both adult and young, the red of the head and breast, is much duller than in spring, “Brazil red” to “dragon’s blood red” in the fall, and “scarlet red” or bright “scarlet” in the late winter and spring; this is due, of course, to the wearing away of the tips of the feathers; in early summer, just before molting, the red is decidedly brilliant.
Adults have a complete annual molt, beginning sometimes in July and lasting through August or later.
Food.—The food of the red-breasted sapsucker is much like that of its close relatives in the varius group. M. P. Skinner writes to me: “I have found red-breasted sapsuckers drilling on cottonwoods, willows, yellow pines, and lodgepole pines; but all the actual feeding I have seen was on willows. Mr. Michael tells me that these birds work largely on the apple trees that have been planted in various parts of the Yosemite Valley. When a sapsucker is at its wells, it takes a sip now and then, but considerable time is used in watchful guarding, or in driving away intruders or would-be robbers. In the case of such wells as I found on willow stems, I could see no established regularity in arrangement. They looked as if the bark had been irregularly scaled off. In fact, such work may be necessary to secure the inner bark; yet the birds actually took sap at such wells. One had a dozen willow stems on which it drilled and sipped in succession; each one was only a few inches from the next; and the bark of each, both above and below the wells, was worn smooth. This bird went from well to well in regular order, then back to the first well to begin again. Although sap formed the bulk of their food in August, I have seen them also searching the bark for insects during that same month.”
McAtee (1911) lists the following trees that are attacked by the red-breasted sapsucker: Cottonwoods, willows, walnuts, birches, oaks, barberry, sycamore, mountain-ash, pears, apples, peaches, plums, apricot, orange, pepper, and blue gum (Eucalyptus). Emanuel Fritz (1937) has, on several occasions, found this sapsucker attacking redwood trees. “In each instance the individual tree was ‘peppered’ with holes in horizontal rows, from the base to the top. In virgin timber, it is only an occasional tree that is attacked, and one searches in vain for another victim in the general vicinity. * * *
“During the present year, the writer came upon his first example of sapsucker work on so-called second-growth redwood. * * * The sapsuckers attacked every tree in two groups, or families, of sprouts.”
W. L. Dawson (1923) writes:
The red-breasted sapsucker does puncture trees and drink sap both in summer and winter. In summer it attacks in this fashion not only pine, fir, aspen, alder, cottonwood and willow trees, but such orchard trees as apple, pear, prune and the like, as may lie within Transition areas. In winter at lower levels it gives attention to evergreen trees, white birch, mountain ash, peach, plum, apricot, English walnut, elder, and pepper trees. * * * Instead of gleaning at random, as we might expect, the Sapsucker makes careful selection, like a prudent forester, of a single tree, and confines his attentions henceforth, even though it be through succeeding seasons, to that one tree. Starting well toward the top of an evergreen, or well up on the major branches of an orchard tree, the bird works successively downward in perpendicular rows, whose borings are sometimes confluent. In this way the bird secures an ever-fresh flow of sap, from below. If carried on too extensively, or persisted in for successive seasons, these operations will sometimes cause a tree to bleed fatally, or at least to fall easy victim to insect pests. I have myself seen limbs of mountain ash trees, pear trees, and English walnut, done to death in this fashion. Yet it is only fair to say that but one or two trees in an orchard may be attacked, and there is scarcely more danger of the trouble spreading than there would be from successive strokes of lightning. * * *
For the rest, Sphyrapicus ruber is a large consumer of ants, and does some good in the destruction of leaf-eating beetles. Berries of the pepper trees (Schinus molle) are eaten to some extent, in winter, as are also, regrettably, seeds of the poison oak.
W. Otto Emerson (1893) says: “One I watched every morning from my tent fly to the top of a tall burnt tree and rap its roll-call as a kind of warning may be to the flying insects. It would then sail out like a flycatcher, catch an insect, and return to the burnt tree-top. Its movements were very graceful and regular. As it dipped or circled around for this or that insect the sunlight catching on the red breast lit it up like a patch of flame.” He says elsewhere (1899): “One I found in a willow tree trying to get the best of a yellow jacket’s nest, dodging back and forth either to get a mouthful of their stored sweets or the jackets themselves.”
Junius Henderson (1927) gives, in his table, the percentages of animal and vegetable food, exclusive of sap, taken by this sapsucker. Based on a study of 34 stomachs the total animal food made up 69 percent and the total vegetable food 31 percent of the whole; 42 percent consisted of ants and 12 percent of fruits, mostly wild; insects accounted for 11 percent and seeds for 5 percent.
Behavior.—Grinnell and Storer (1924) write:
The Sierra red-breasted sapsucker is in our experience well-nigh voiceless and its work is done in such a quiet manner that it does not ordinarily attract attention, as do the woodpeckers that are wont to pound noisily. The most vigorous drilling of the sapsucker will scarcely be heard more than a hundred feet away. The bird moves its head through a short arc, an inch or two at the most, giving but slight momentum to the blows. The chips cut away are correspondingly small, mere sawdust as compared with the splinters or slabs chiseled off by other woodpeckers. The strokes are delivered in intermittent series, four or five within a second, then a pause of equal duration, then another short series, and so on. From time to time a longer pause ensues, when the sapsucker withdraws its bill and gazes monocularly at the work.
Mr. Skinner says, in his notes: “Although methodical, these birds seem quite nervous, moving from stem to stem. Generally they perch lengthwise of a limb when working or feeding but are apt to perch crosswise when hopping from limb to limb. After a sapsucker has its wells established, it finds it necessary to stay near to guard them from other birds attracted by the sap, or by the insects drawn there. Preening is often done while guarding the wells. The hairy woodpeckers chase these sapsuckers from tree to tree. The Audubon and lutescent warblers literally swarm to the sap-wells in the willows whenever the sapsuckers cease to guard them, but I do not know that there is active antagonism between the species. On one occasion, I saw a young sapsucker chase off a chipmunk that came too near.”
Voice.—Ralph Hoffmann (1927) says that “the ordinary cry is a nasal squeal, chée-arr, somewhat suggesting the note of a red-bellied hawk.” But it is apparently not a noisy bird, as Grinnell and Storer (1924) say that it is “well-nigh voiceless”.
Field marks.—The red head and breast of the adult are unmistakable and very conspicuous. The young bird might be mistaken for the young of the red-naped sapsucker, as they are much alike, but the head of the red-breasted sapsucker is darker and often shows dull red. The broad, white band in the wing is conspicuous while the bird is perched or when flying; this is common to both adults and young, but the red-naped sapsucker has a very similar white band.
Winter.—Mr. Dawson (1923) writes: “Sapsuckers are more extensively migratory than any other woodpeckers, save Colaptes, but ruber’s migrations are chiefly altitudinal. Retirement from the untenable heights is quite irregular, and dependent upon weather conditions. The winter distribution, also, appears somewhat irregular and haphazard. The bird is very quiet and rather stolid in winter, as becomes a bird of high feather. It is, however, quite as likely to be seen in a city park or on a shaded avenue as in a foothill forest.”