Voice.—Just as the sapsucker in its behavior is conspicuous, almost boisterous, at one season of the year and retiring and unobtrusive at another, in the same way it is very noisy in spring and the early part of the nesting period and comparatively silent afterward.
Dr. C. Hart Merriam (1879) speaks of the bird thus: “In few species can the date of arrival, in spring, be ascertained with such precision as in the bird now under consideration; for, no sooner are they here, and recovered from the fatigue of their northward journey, than the country fairly resounds with their cries and drumming. * * * Noisy, rollicking fellows, they are always chasing one another among the trees, screaming meanwhile at the top of their voices, and when three or four vociferous males alight on the same tree, as often happens, their boisterous cries are truly astonishing.”
William Brewster (1876a) mentions a “peculiar snarling cry” used as an alarm note, and of a pair at the nest he says:
Watching once a nest for an hour or two, I remarked that the birds relieved each other in the labors of incubation at intervals averaging about half an hour each. The one that had been absent would alight just below the hole, and, uttering a low yew-ick, yew-ick, its mate would appear from within, when, after the interchange of a few notes of endearment, the sitting bird would fly off and the other instantly enter the hole. * * *
Both young and old utter most frequently a low snarling cry that bears no very distant resemblance to the mew of the Catbird. The adults have also two other notes—one, already spoken of, when the opposite sexes meet; the other a clear, ringing cleur, repeated five or six times in succession, and heard, I think, only in the spring.
Of the voice of the sapsucker, Bendire (1895) says: “Its ordinary call note is a whining ‘whäee,’ and it utters a number of other sounds, some of these resembling the calls of the Blue Jay, and others those of the Red-shouldered Hawk. During the mating season, when the sexes are chasing each other, a series of notes like ‘hoih-hoih,’ a number of times repeated, are frequently heard. Although generally disposed to be more or less noisy, while clinging to their food trees they are always silent as far as my observations go.”
The note mentioned above does resemble the cry of the blue jay somewhat in form, but the notes of the two birds need never be confused. The sapsucker’s may be as long as the blue jay’s, or the caw of a crow; again it may be given as a very short syllable. The note commonly is not nearly so loud as the blue jay’s and the tone of voice is different; it is a complaining whine rather than a boisterous shout.
Another note, a minor note heard only when one is near the bird, is very like the explosive hit of the red-breasted nuthatch—the little conversational note that the nuthatches use as they scramble over the bark, not the nasal toot.
The most remarkable of the sapsucker’s utterances, in that it does not resemble a bird note at all, is a single syllable sounded regularly over and over again—a low-toned tuck, like slow, sharp strokes on a nonresonant branch. This note might sometimes be mistaken for a chipmunk’s pluck, except that it lacks completely any ringing quality of tone.
Field marks.—The colored plates in the illustrated books on ornithology lead one to expect to find the yellow-bellied sapsucker rather a brilliantly colored, conspicuous bird. However, when we meet it in the field, the colors, so bright and sharply outlined in the picture of the bird, are often dimmed by the shadows of limbs and leaves, and as the chief color is of a neutral tint, not unlike the bark of many trees, we may sometimes pass the bird by, unnoticed. Our first impression of the bird, when we catch a glimpse of it, is of a medium-sized woodpecker, dull old-gold in color, and almost without markings. A glass, however, brings out a thin line of white along the length of the closed wing, a red or reddish forehead and fore part of the crown, a black mark across the upper breast, and, if we look very carefully, a yellowish belly.