Food.—Mr. Neff (1928) lists 67 species of fruit, forest, and ornamental trees and shrubs that are known to have been tapped by the red-breasted sapsucker, showing that this species is not at all particular as to what kind of sap it drinks. A total of 64 stomachs were examined, representing every month in the year. “The stomach analyses revealed 40.7 percent of vegetable food, and 52.53 percent insect food.” Ants formed the bulk of the insect food, running as high as 80 percent in July; other items were boring beetles and their larvae, other beetles, weevils, caddiceflies, aphids, various flies, mites, and spiders. Fruit averaged less than 4 percent of the food and included elderberries, wild cherries, haw and dogwood berries. “No cultivated fruits were taken and seeds were almost a minus quantity. True cambium or soft inner bark averaged 31.35 percent; most of this was taken between October and April. Other bark, fibre, and miscellaneous vegetable matter averaged 5.14 percent.”
Bendire (1895) says: “Their food consists principally of grubs, larvæ of insects, ants, various species of lepidoptera, which they catch on the wing, like Flycatchers, and berries. * * * They seem to be especially fond of wild strawberries.”
Behavior.—Charles A. Allen, of Nicasio, Calif., wrote to Major Bendire (1895): “These Woodpeckers are very fond of hanging to telegraph poles, and may be found drumming along the line of the Central Pacific Railroad through the Sierra Nevadas, where you can hear them beating a tattoo for hours at a time. If you try to approach one, as soon as a certain distance is reached the bird will sidle to the opposite side of the pole, and then keep peeping around the corner at whatever has excited his suspicions, and as soon as it thinks it has a good opportunity to escape it will fly away with a shrill cry, and keep the pole in line between it and yourself for protection. Here they are very shy, and remain very quiet if discovered.”
According to Bendire’s own experience—
“These birds are not at all shy during the breeding season, allowing you to approach them closely; but they have an extraordinarily keen sense of hearing. I frequently tried to sneak up to a tree close to my house which I knew had been selected by a pair of these birds, to watch them at work, but I was invariably detected by the bird, no matter how carefully I tried to creep up, before I was able to get within 30 yards, even when she was at work on the inside of the cavity and could not possibly see me. The bird would cease working at once, her head would pop out of the hole for an instant, and the surroundings would be surveyed carefully. If I kept out of sight and perfectly still, she would probably begin working again a few minutes afterward, but if I moved ever so little, without even making the least noise, in my own estimation, she would notice it and stop working again at once. If the tree were approached too closely, she would fly off, uttering at the same time a note resembling the word ‘jay,’ or ‘chäe,’ several times repeated, which would invariably bring the male around also, who had in the meantime kept himself busy in some other tree, either drumming or hunting for food. While the female was at work on the inside of the excavation the male would fly to the entrance, from time to time, and look in; * * * and at other times he would hang, for five or ten minutes even, just below the entrance to the burrow, in a dreamy sort of study, perfectly motionless and seemingly dazed.”
Mr. Neff (1928) writes:
They have not been found to be particularly quiet excepting during the hotter summer months. At other times they have been neither noticeably noisy nor silent. The outstanding features of their behavior have proven to be pugnacity and noise during the mating season and while incubating and feeding the young, and an extreme curiosity at other times. In many instances the writer has located them by utilizing this curiosity; sitting motionless on a log or rock after failing to find them, any sapsucker in the community would soon make its presence known by a characteristic interrogative call, at first from a distance, gradually drawing nearer.
In winter they seem to be quite belligerent, for on several occasions one has been located by the angry noise as if of a pitched battle; on closer investigation it would be found that the sapsucker was attempting to drive some other woodpecker, generally the Gairdner, from some favorite tree.
Voice.—Bendire (1895) says: “While the nest was being rifled of its contents both parents flew about the upper limbs of the tree, uttering a number of different sounding, plaintive sounds, like ‘peeye,’ ‘pinck,’ and ‘peurr,’ some of these resembling somewhat the purring of a cat when pleased and rubbing against your leg. I used to note the different sounds in a small notebook at the very time, but scarcely ever put them down alike; each time they appeared a trifle different to the ear, and it is a hard matter to express them exactly on paper.”
Mr. Dawson (Dawson and Bowles, 1909) says that while he was chopping out the nest the birds “made frequent approaches from a neighboring tree, crying kee-a, kee-aa, in helpless bewilderment. * * * When all was over, they raised a high, strong qué-oo,—qeé-oo, never before heard, and reminding one generically of the Red-headed Woodpecker of boyhood days.”